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In recent weeks a number of hospitals across the UK have declared a major incident caused by an influx of patients, few available beds and staffing problems.
Scarborough Hospital was one of those sites, where one emergency medicine consultant said that despite extra staff being called in they face "mayhem" on a daily basis.
| BBC Yorkshire's Inside Out spent a shift at Scarborough's A&E unit to see how accident and emergency staff coped.
In one day, 114 people came through the doors of the accident and emergency department looking for help.
The medical team did its best to cope with the stream of patients, but in the words of A&E consultant doctor Ed Smith, it was "not an A&E crisis, it's an NHS system crisis."
The College of Emergency Medicine recommends the A&E department should have 10 doctors at consultant level, but it has just three.
One casualty patient, aged 97, had to wait for 15 hours before a bed was found for her.
Mr Smith said the sight of patients on hospital trolleys waiting in corridors for a bed space on a ward was becoming commonplace.
"I'm afraid it's an absolutely daily sight and despite our major incident which did improve the situation for 48 hours it's business as usual and I think you'll probably find this is the experience of most departments around the country at the moment," he said.
The major incident was declared at the resort hospital on 5 January because the wards were full but space was required for 18 more patients who needed to be admitted.
Lead nurse Simon Etches said the influx of patients and the shortage of available beds was the worst he had seen in nearly three decades in the profession.
He said: "I've been doing this job about 28 years in various A&E departments and I've never seen pressures like this.
"I've never seen staff working so hard, I've never seen A&E departments in this sort of situation."
Mr Etches said he was glad not to be at the beginning of his career.
"I don't know how long I'd be able to keep working under this amount of pressure," he said.
Whatever the difficulties in A&E, the problem of finding a bed on a ward for his patient is one consultant Ed Smith regularly faces.
He said: "There are beds coming up, but it's slow.
"There are beds becoming available, the expectation is there will be a certain number of discharges through the day.
"What we don't know is exactly what time we'll have all the beds available for the patients we've got in the department."
Despite the consultant's best efforts patients continue to arrive all day either by ambulance, those sent by the GP or "walk ins".
"We anticipate that will happen over the next few hours, but obviously there's this backlog at the moment where patients are waiting to come in.
"The ambulances have off-loaded onto our trolleys simply because it enables the ambulances to go out and help other people.
"But the patients are on trolleys in the corridor and we haven't got any physical space to put them into at the moment."
Managers at the hospital have even been used as porters to move patients around the hospital.
Mr Smith said: "What we're trying to do is manage a system which is overwhelmed.
"We're really close to the limit of our ability to continue to manage this mayhem that we live in day-to-day."
Deputy chief executive of the York Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust Mike Proctor said the major incident situation was "the worst I'd seen, I've been involved as a director of operations for 17 years on and off in this patch."
Asked whether he accepted any blame for the situation, Mr Proctor said: "We have to take some, and it's a question I ask myself.
"With hindsight one could always do some different things.
"Should I have gone to Spain to recruit more nurses last summer? Maybe that would have made the situation better."
But, he stressed the problem was not unique to Scarborough.
"There are many other hospitals in the country in exactly the same position as us," he said.
"That isn't my fault, and I don't think its fair to put blame on any particular party or anything else.
"I think we need longer term solutions to come into force - there is some light at the end of the tunnel."
BBC Inside Out Yorkshire and Lincolnshire is on BBC One in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire on Monday, 19 January at 19:30 GMT and nationwide on the iPlayer for 28 days thereafter.
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"Folks, if this is your first time tuning in to the Colbert Report, I have some terrible news," Stephen Colbert announced on episode 1,447 of his Comedy Central cable show last night. "This, in fact, is your last time tuning in to the Colbert Report." | By Anthony ZurcherEditor, Echo Chambers
And so began Mr Colbert's soliloquy on the historical import of his Comedy Central show, whose last episode aired Thursday night. He's moving on to replace David Letterman on CBS's Late Show next year, and he's retiring the character of "Stephen Colbert" - a right-wing blowhard pundit used to skewer right-wing blowhard pundits - that he has essentially lived in for the past decade.
"In the annals of history, or whatever orifice they stuff it in, let no one say what we did together was not important or influential or importulential," he said. "You see from the beginning of my show, it was my goal to live up to the name of this network, Influence Central. And if all we achieved over the last nine years was to come into your home each night and help you make a difficult day a little better … man, what a waste."
While Mr Colbert joked about the show's influence, other writers have noted that the programme has had a significant impact on US culture.
"What we were seeing was the perfect indictment of the world of political punditry, yes, but also a send-up of our inflexibility when it came to opinions, reason and the truth," writes the Washington Post's Hank Stuever.
The Daily Beast's Noel Murray observes that Mr Colbert's show was about more than spoofing right-wing talk show hosts like Fox's Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity, which explains why it was able to stay fresh and engaging for so many years.
"Colbert kept building out his character's backstory, turning a single-panel cartoon into something more like a long-running comic strip, with a myriad of subplots."
He continues: "All the looks back at this Colbert character have been a clever way of pointing out that some of the most trusted names in politics today are little more than escapees from some local radio station's Morning Zoo."
The "Colbert Nation", Mr Colbert's millions-strong band of viewers, is perhaps the best demonstration of the show's reach. At Mr Colbert's urging, they raised millions for charity, altered Wikipedia entries and swamped countless internet polls around the world. (At one point the Hungarian ambassador to the US appeared on the programme to apologise that that his country would not name a bridge after the host, despite "Stephen Colbert" having received the most votes.)
The show's decade long-run was a remarkable bit of performance theatre unlike anything on US television - one so convincing that some polls showed some conservative viewers didn't understand that the show was satire.
"It's hard to wake up every day and try to change the world," writes Salon's Sonia Saraiya. "Stephen Colbert has a set of talents that he could deploy with devastating effect, and he decided to use them for making the world funnier and saner."
As Mr Colbert's final show wound to a close, he accidentally became immortal by killing death and engaged in a rousing rendition of We'll Meet Again with George Lucas, Henry Kissinger, Willie Nelson, Tom Brokaw and dozens of other celebrities, journalists and politicians.
"The all-star send-off is a staple of talk-show finales, but this one seemed to say something here about the vast world that Colbert created with the Report," says Time magazine's James Poniewozik. "The show itself was not the sum total of the production that Colbert has put since 2005. It was just the flagship product of a larger performance that extended to the internet, to public rallies, to political campaigns and even to space."
In the final scene, Mr Colbert stood atop his studio's building holding a Captain America shield, where he was met by Santa Claus, an e-cigarette smoking Abraham Lincoln unicorn and game-show host Alex Trebec. He climbed aboard Santa's sleigh, and they flew off into the night.
"From eternity," he said as he signed off, "I'm Stephen Colbert."
Like Lincoln, it seems, "Stephen Colbert" now belongs to the ages.
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Kit Harington spent much of his 20s in the sprawling fantasy world of the international TV hit Game of Thrones. But now it's just him and his (pretend) brother slugging it out for dominance in a kitchen in California in the modern stage classic True West. | By Vincent DowdArts reporter, BBC News
Director Matthew Dunster says it didn't take long to work out that Harington and Johnny Flynn would be perfect casting for the big roles in True West. But the thing he loved first was the title.
"As a writer, Sam Shepard had a gift for the poetry of a great title - there's Buried Child and Fool for Love and True West and Far North. Each of them is so evocative."
Shepard died last year aged 73 - Dunster regrets that he never met him. "It's the first London production of a Shepard play since then so it's our tribute to the talent that made him a major American playwright for 40 years."
True West is the intense story of two brothers. Austin - played by Harington - is an aspiring Hollywood writer who hopes to sell a screenplay to a producer. His brother Lee initially appears hopelessly shambolic but the balance of power between them shifts.
Harington says the two men can be seen as two halves of the same person. "By the time Sam Shepard wrote it he'd had a lot of experience in Hollywood and definitely one of the things he's writing about is creative integrity. Shepard is a very American playwright but also he's telling a story about fraternal rivalry which is universal."
The actor's last appearance on stage in London was in 2016 in Doctor Faustus. "I got a lot from playing that role but often I felt very alone doing it and at times I knew I'd leapt into something where I was a little out of my depth. But in True West I share the stage with Johnny and I knew at once it would be fun to do."
Flynn says he and Harington are building a sense of trust and companionship off stage. "It's a four-character play but inevitably it's the Austin-Lee dynamic which dictates the action. I know that on stage there's already an energy passing between us and that will only get more profound as the run progresses."
That energy manifests itself in a prolonged fight between the brothers. Dunster has brought in fight arrangers Rachel Bown-Williams and Ruth Cooper-Brown to choreograph.
"Actually the difficult part has been persuading Kit he can't always be the winner," he says. "At one point in rehearsal Johnny put a cable around Kit's neck for maybe five seconds and Kit freaked - he wasn't happy at all." Harington insists the biggest problem has been carpet-burn.
On screen Harington has had his fair share of action scenes playing Jon Snow in Game of Thrones since 2011. Shooting for the eighth and final season ended in June. Harington has been in the series throughout (despite having been bloodily killed off in season five).
He's used to fending off journalists' questions about episodes to come. Asked to describe the final story, which he filmed this summer, he volunteers that "there's a really big dance number" - which doesn't feel hugely reliable.
"It was emotional to leave the job definitely," he says. "But I wouldn't say I was sad: if like me you go all the way back to the pilot of Game of Thrones that's almost 10 years of your life - that's really unusual in an actor's career. It was a huge emotional upheaval leaving that family. But would I want to go back and do more? Not on your life."
HBO is currently at work on a prequel, reportedly set centuries before Game of Thrones. What if he were asked to film a single scene, maybe as an ancestor of Jon Snow? His answer remains an unequivocal no - he's enjoying stage-work too much.
Flynn has a second career as a musician. He's composed several pieces for the play, at Dunster's request. "But Matthew was insistent we avoid what could have been the musical clichés a British person might expect - probably slide guitar and cod blues.
"Partly the play is about the appropriation of narrative so I got thinking about the original people who might have lived in this landscape before Austin and Lee. I listened to a lot of music of the Hopi people and also Navajo and Mojave music - basically using a lot of drums and flute music. It has a medicine ceremony aspect to it which might involve ancestral spirits. It's been a great thing to explore."
Shepard's 'epic' writing
There's only a tiny list of plays from the last 50 years which have had multiple revivals both in London and in New York. True West is on that list - and a different revival is to open on Broadway at the end of December, starring Paul Dano and Ethan Hawke.
Dunster says he's happy to be opening first. He thinks the play's continued popularity has two explanations.
"Partly it's commercial and practical: True West only needs four actors, which is great for producers watching the money. It's not a particularly long play and it doesn't call for a massive set.
"Yet somehow Sam's writing makes it feel epic - it's the way he handles the tensions on stage. Oddly, you could even compare it to the huge canvas of Game of Thrones: a lot of what kept us addicted there was division within families and between brothers.
"Family tensions are one of the most universal themes in all story-telling. We've all known those tensions but it takes a Sam Shepard to turn them into great drama."
True West is playing at the Vaudeville theatre in London.
Follow us on Facebook, on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts, or on Instagram at bbcnewsents. If you have a story suggestion email [email protected].
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If you believe the hype, one of the biggest video games out this year is hitting shelves across the UK this weekend. | By Dan WhitworthNewsbeat technology reporter
Red Dead Redemption is the latest release from video game pioneers Rockstar, the people behind the Grand Theft Auto and Manhunt series.
This new open world game has already topped pre-order charts and follows an ex-outlaw making his way through the American Wild West.
We put some of your questions (as well as some of our own) to Lazlow, one of the game's developers and the radio DJ featured in the GTA games. Here's what he had to say.
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When Tom Patterson started vomiting during an Egyptian holiday he thought he had food poisoning. He was wrong. In fact he was infected with an antibiotic-resistant superbug and only his wife's determination and a revolutionary new treatment would save him. | By Natasha LipmanBBC World Service
"Has anyone told Steff her husband is going to die?"
It was a question Steffanie Strathdee was not supposed to hear. She had been talking on the telephone with colleagues, who continued talking among themselves after they thought she'd hung up.
Steffanie, an infectious disease epidemiologist, knew her husband, Tom Patterson, was desperately ill - he was at that moment lying in a medically induced coma - but it still came as a shock to hear that he was now expected to die.
"I thought, 'Oh my God. No, nobody has.' I cradled the phone in my arms like a baby, and that moment was so profound. I realised if he's really dying I need to do something. If modern medicine doesn't have anything left I need to try my very best."
Doctors were quickly running out of ways to keep Tom alive, as a deadly superbug rampaged through his bloodstream - resistant to all antibiotics they had to offer.
Steffanie had read in some medical literature that sometimes people in comas can hear, so she decided to ask Tom if he wanted to live.
"I thought I can't just take matters into my own hands and keep him alive if he doesn't want to live any more. I need to ask him," Steffanie says. "So I held his hand with my blue-gloved hand and I said, 'Honey, if you wanna live, you need to give it all you've got, the doctors don't have anything left. All these antibiotics are useless now. So if you want to live, please squeeze my hand and I will leave no stone unturned.'"
After a while, Tom squeezed her hand.
"I pumped my fist into the air and said, 'Oh this is wonderful!'" Steffanie says. "And then I realised, 'Oh my God, what am I going to do now? I'm not a medical doctor, I don't know what to do.'
The couple, both scientists at the University of California, San Diego, had met through their work in Aids research. Avid travellers, they visited about 50 countries together, often tacking on a few days of holiday at the end of academic conferences to explore new places.
In November 2015, they were about to travel to Egypt, when a terrorist bomb brought down a Russian jet flying out of Sharm el-Sheikh. They discussed whether to cancel the trip, but decided to go anyway.
"Tom said, 'Oh it's the perfect time to go! There won't be any crowds!' I said, 'Are you crazy?' I wrote out the rest of our will by hand and I handed it to my parents, who were house-sitting. We thought that if there was going to be a problem, it would be a terrorist attack or something."
The trip was fantastic, as expected. Their last stop was the Valley of the Kings, and to get there, they took an overnight boat ride down the Nile. Almost the only passengers on a riverboat designed for 150, they had a wonderful meal under the stars on the deck of the ship, the Nile shimmering all around them.
But once back in their cabin, Tom started vomiting. At first the couple assumed it was food poisoning. On their travels they always carried Cipro, an antibiotic, but this time it didn't work. Tom kept getting worse, and started experiencing pain in his back. It didn't feel like the food poisoning he'd had before.
Steffanie got Tom to some doctors on dry land, who carried out a CT scan and discovered that it wasn't food poisoning at all. He had an abcess in his gut, known as pseudocyst, which had grown nearly to the size of a football.
Thanks to their medical insurance, taken out for $35 before the trip, Tom was med-evaced to Frankfurt, where doctors found that the initial cause of the problem was a stone expelled from his gallbladder that had got stuck in his biliary duct. Inside the cyst they found a murky, brown fluid that indicated this wasn't a new infection. As they worked to figure out what was happening, Tom started to fall into a coma.
"I was hallucinating, thinking I was in Egypt, seeing hieroglyphs on the walls, really losing it," Tom says. "Because of the infection in my gut - and by this point I hadn't had much sleep in a few days - I was getting pretty crazy. The doctors came back and said, 'This is the worst infection on the planet. This is an infection that's closed down hospitals in Germany. It's called Acinetobacter baumannii.'"
Tom was put into isolation, and his children flew over because of concern that he wouldn't make it. When doctors visited him, they wore special gowns.
This startled Steffanie, who was familiar with Acinetobacter from her undergraduate studies in microbiology.
"I was really shocked because this is an organism that I used to plate on my petri dishes back in the 1980s, and it was considered to be a very wimpy pathogen back then. We just needed gloves, a lab coat and no special equipment," she says.
"Over the last couple of decades, it's become what is essentially a bacterial kleptomaniac. It's learned how to steal antibiotic resistance genes from other bacteria and it has taken on these superpower capabilities that have made it a very deadly pathogen."
In 2017 it was listed by the World Health Organization as one of three superbugs for which new antibiotics were most urgently needed. Fortunately, there were still some antibiotics that worked on Tom, though, and the Frankfurt medical team was able to stabilise him.
Find out more
Tom and Steffanie were friends, through their work, with a number of medical experts who were able to advise on Tom's situation, and it was decided to move him back to San Diego. Doctors there had experience of Acinetobacter baumannii, due to the high military presence in the area - the bug has been nicknamed Iraqibacter, because of the large number of infections picked up by US forces in the Middle East.
When Tom arrived, he was tested again for sensitivity to antibiotics. It was bad news. None of them were now having any effect.
The doctors had a tough decision to make: they could either operate to remove the abcess, or try to siphon the infected fluid out of his body. But operating, it was decided, was too risky - if the organism got into his bloodstream he would go into septic shock.
Steffanie describes septic shock as the overreaction of the body's immune system to the invader. The body goes into "red alert", blood pressure drops, heart rate increases, breathing speeds up.
"It happens very quickly and has a 50% mortality rate," she says.
So doctors opted for siphoning off the fluid instead, poking five drains into Tom's abdomen.
Plans were made to transfer him to a long-term acute care facility. However, the day before this was due to happen, one of the drains slipped as he tried to sit up in bed, dumping all the infection into his bloodstream. He immediately went into septic shock, was rushed back into intensive care and put on a ventilator to breathe.
"From that moment on, the bacteria was colonised everywhere in his body - in his blood, not just his abdomen. He was slipping away day by day," Steffanie says.
A large man, 6ft 5in tall and weighing 300lb (21 stone), he had already lost a huge amount of weight.
"I could put my fist into the hollow in his cheekbone and two knuckles behind the orbits of his eyes and it was just horrible," Steffanie says.
At this point, Tom didn't really know what was happening. "I was hallucinating these elaborate stories that were almost biblical in proportion. Things like I spent 100 years wandering through the desert trying to answer three questions posed by holy men. That went on for days," he says.
He would come out of his coma for a short time, and was then able to communicate with the people around him, but he couldn't get out of bed.
It was around this time that Steffanie overheard her colleagues asking if she'd been told Tom was going to die - and that she asked him to squeeze her hand if he wanted to live.
What Steffanie didn't know was that at this moment he was hallucinating that he was a snake. How could he squeeze her hand when snakes don't have hands? He eventually worked out that he could wrap his whole body around her hand - only then did he give the signal.
Realising that desperate measures were called for, Steffanie turned to PubMed - the search engine of the National Library of Medicine.
"I put in 'multidrug resistance', 'Acinetobacter baumannii', and 'alternative treatments', and up popped a paper with something called bacteriophage therapy in the title and I thought, 'Bacteriophage... I remember what they are.'"
Phages are viruses that have naturally evolved to attack bacteria and, again, Steffanie had studied them for a short time as an undergraduate.
They are tiny, 100 times smaller than bacteria, and they are everywhere, she says, in water, in soil and on our skin. It's estimated that 30 billion of them pass in and out of our bodies every day.
A century ago, phages were attracting a lot of attention as a possible cure for bacterial infections, but outside the former Soviet Union and parts of Eastern Europe this research fell by the wayside after the discovery of the wonder drug, penicillin, in 1928.
After penicillin came other kinds of antibiotics, says Steffanie, which made doctors in the West think they could always find a fix for any new bacterial infection.
"Boy were we wrong!" she says. "It was only when these superbugs, these bacteria that have been resistant to multiple antibiotics, started to become a real global health threat that we started to take a second look [at phages]."
Steffanie's next step was to approach the Food and Drug Administration, with the help of one of Tom's physicians, Dr Chip Schooley of the University of California San Diego Department of Medicine, which approved an experimental treatment on compassionate grounds.
But there was a catch. In order for the treatment to work, Steffanie had to find phages that matched the particular form of the Acinetobacter bacterium Tom was infected with - and with trillions of phages on the planet this was no easy task.
Steffanie turned back to the internet and contacted researchers in North America she hoped would be able to help - though none were using phages as a medical treatment.
Dr Ry Young at Texas A&M university replied quickly, offering to turn his lab into a command centre, and asking phage experts from all over the world to send him their phages to be tested against Tom's bacteria.
"We essentially had phage researchers from all over the world who were offering help - from Switzerland, Belgium, Poland, the Republic of Georgia, India. The Belgians even offered for their phage to be sent in a diplomatic pouch. These were total strangers who had stepped up to the plate, a true global village to rescue one man," Steffanie says.
Within three weeks, thanks partly to a PhD student who slept in the lab to do vital work around the clock, a cocktail of four phages was ready.
By this point, Tom was on full life support. His lungs and kidneys were failing, he was on a ventilator, and required three different medications to keep his heart pumping. He may have been only hours away from dying.
The atmosphere in the hospital was becoming emotional, even spiritual.
"People were lighting candles, saying prayers, sending song recommendations. We had music playing in the background and Tom even remembers to this day The Beatles playing when he was lapsing in and out of coma," says Steffanie.
The responsibility for the experimental treatment they were about to undertake weighed heavily on her.
"It was terrifying because I thought, 'Well he's going to die anyway, if we don't do this… but if this kills him I'll have to bear this on my conscience for the rest of my life.'"
The first phage cocktail was injected into tubes in Tom's abdomen, closest to the infection. When he was more stable, a second and more potent phage cocktail, developed in a US Navy medical centre, was injected into his bloodstream.
This was a real innovation, as even in places where phage therapy is still used, it's not usually administered intravenously. The phage preparations could kill the patient if they aren't clean enough, and often they come from dirty places rich in bacteria, such as sewers - "from some of the gnarliest places you can imagine," as Steffanie puts it.
But three days after the phages were administered, Tom woke up from his coma.
"My daughter was standing over me and I reached out for her hand and kissed it," he says. "I couldn't speak at the time and then I was tired, I fell back asleep."
Soon after the start of the phage therapy Tom had another case of septic shock, his sixth out of seven in total during the nine months he spent in hospital.
A number of phages were used as his treatment continued, and the bacteria developed resistance to some of them. It's not completely clear which phages worked and which didn't.
He's now three-quarters of the way through a predicted four-year recovery period.
He had to re-learn to swallow, to talk, to stand, to walk. He left hospital in a wheelchair because his muscles had wasted away.
One of the lessons Tom draws from his months in hospital is about the importance of company. His son-in-law put together a schedule of visitors to ensure that someone was with him 24/7, and even when he was in a coma, he could often hear, at a distance, what was going on.
"I could hear people talking, and people read to me and sang to me, and held my hand - and a touch was like an electric shock, so much energy comes to you," he says.
Tom was the first person in North America to receive intravenous phage therapy to treat a systematic superbug infection. Steffanie recognises how lucky they were, and how much depended on her connections, which enabled her to launch the international effort to save her husband.
When, a year into Tom's recovery, his case was presented at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, at a gathering to mark the 100th anniversary of the discovery of the bacteriophage in 1917, Steffanie started receiving calls from people all over the world - people whose family members who were dying from a superbug infection, and who wanted to try phage therapy.
"I was overwhelmed," she says. "But I tried to recreate the same kind of response that was made for Tom. We saved some people, not just their lives but their limbs, and one of the most miraculous cases to have occurred as a result of Tom's was Isabelle."
Isabelle Carnell-Holdaway, a British teenager suffering from cystic fibrosis, had developed an antibiotic-resistant infection after a lung transplant. In October 2017, Isabelle's doctors got in touch with Graham Hatfull, a phage expert at the University of Pittsburgh, and his team used their vast phage collection to develop a genetically modified phage cocktail to treat Isabelle. Dr Chip Schooley, who presided over Tom's phage treatment, then worked with the Pittsburgh and London teams to gain approval for the therapeutic use of the cocktail.
Therapy began in June 2018, and Isabelle soon began to recover. Within months she was able to return to a normal routine, even though she had once been given only a 1% chance of survival. The experience gained from saving Tom was invaluable for treating Isabelle's infection.
There are still many hurdles to cross before phage therapy can enter mainstream medicine.
Phages are not like drugs, where one drug might be active against a wide variety of organisms. Phages work best when they are tailored very precisely to the bacterium a particular patient is infected with, which makes designing clinical trials more complex. So far only a few have taken place.
But Steffanie and Tom have become phage evangelists. They have told their story in a book, The Perfect Predator, which is now being made into a documentary and a Hollywood film.
They have also opened the Center for Innovative Phage Therapy and Therapeutics at the University of California, San Diego - the first dedicated phage therapy centre in North America.
Part of their mission is to persuade people of the urgency of finding a solution to antibiotic resistance. Unless something is done, Steffanie says, one person will be dying of a superbug infection every three seconds by 2050.
"As an infectious disease epidemiologist, having my husband dying from a superbug was just a shock," Steffanie says.
"It felt like God's cruel joke. Part of me was the scientist trying to analyse things and get control, the other part of me was the wife-me, trying to hold my husband's hand and cope with a desperate situation.
"But to be honest, I was extremely embarrassed because I was really blind to this global threat - the superbug crisis - that had crept up on me."
All pictures courtesy of Steffanie Strathdee unless otherwise specified
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Because of rare illness, Louise Moorhouse is on a special diet of pills or foul-tasting shakes. There's a drug that would allow her to eat like anyone else - she took it for three years during a clinical trial. But the NHS won't pay for it, and the drug company stopped giving it to her once the trial was over.
'I helped test a wonder drug - then I was denied it' (April 2019)
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A rider suffered an "unsurvivable head fracture" after he "lost control" of his motorbike during the Isle of Man's Classic TT, an inquest has been told. | Douglas Courthouse heard New Zealand teacher Chris Swallow crashed at Ballaugh Village during the Senior Classic TT race on 24 August.
Coroner Jayne Hughes said the 37-year-old had sustained "multiple injuries".
Adjourning the inquest, she passed her condolences to his family, who were not in attendance at the courthouse.
Swallow, who was an experienced competitor, was born in Huddersfield and emigrated to Wellington in 2010.
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The phrase crash for cash first emerged around 10 years ago and has now taken its place in common parlance.
For the Yandell family from south Wales it became a career choice, a way of life.
Running a crash for cash swindle as a business, police say they made up to £2m with staged crashes, whiplash injuries, courtesy cars and repairs that simply never happened.
They went undetected for years due to the sheer number of people they roped into the scam, a wide range of names and addresses ensuring they stayed under the radar of insurance companies.
And had it not been for Facebook - along with some good old fashioned stupidity - the chances are they would have got away with it.
For the past three years BBC Wales' Week In Week Out current affairs programme has followed the investigation securing exclusive access to those leading it.
Here is a glimpse at the tenacity which exposed the size, audacity and at times blatant stupidity of Wales' great car crash con. | By Ceri JacksonBBC News
Facebook can be a minefield. One inappropriate post, one compromising photo could so easily spell the end of a career or leave a relationship in turmoil.
Facebook, as the Yandell family found out, can even land you in jail.
On the face of it, the Yandells were a fairly regular family living in Blackwood, a fairly regular former mining town in south Wales, most famous for being the home of rock band Manic Street Preachers.
In a time before social media, Peter Yandell, now 53, set up a legitimate business - a back street garage called St David's Crash Repair.
In 2010, the younger of his two sons, Byron, 32, took it over. He gave it a new name - Easifix.
Easifix comprised a large workshop and spray bay inside a fenced compound strewn with vehicles in various states of disrepair. As back street garages go, again, pretty unremarkable.
But the Yandells had diversified their business.
In precisely what way would only be discovered by pure chance.
Acting on a tip-off that a stolen car was being kept there, Gwent Police arrived at Easifix on the evening of 2 August 2011.
They found the remains of the stolen car - a Renault Megane. It had been stripped down to its bare shell.
So the Yandells were involved in car theft. That much was clear.
Byron Yandell was arrested and the case passed on to a small team of officers investigating a criminal gang stealing quad, mountain and off-road bikes.
A search of Easifix ensued and 20-or-so other stolen vehicles were identified. All that remained of some were registration plates and tax discs.
That was likely to have been the extent of the inquiry until, that was, an officer spotted a single sheet of paper among mounds of Easifix paperwork.
"Someone came up to me and said 'Sarge, have a look at this'," said Det Sgt Andy Cullen who led a team of five detectives on the case.
"He handed me a piece of paper. On it were written words to the effect of 'what to say to the insurance company'."
Alarm bells started ringing.
What started with a call about a stolen car, began spiralling into a highly-complex investigation - entitled Operation Dino - which would expose Wales' biggest and "highly organised" motor insurance fraud.
Next week the final five people involved are due to be sentenced.
In total over the past five years, 83 people have been found guilty - 81 on conspiracy to defraud and two for theft - and have received sentences ranging from six years in jail to suspended prison terms.
"There's such a variety of people involved in this from nans to unemployed people to those with professional, decent jobs and an awful lot to lose," said Det Con Jon Parkinson.
"There's a core of people who are pushing it - the Yandells mainly. For quite a lot of them it's greed, easy money, a tried-and-tested scam, nothing to worry about.
"On the flip-side there are some people who were talked into it by greedy family members.
"They told their nan or aunty, 'You don't even have to say anything, just sign here and there's a little bit of money in it for you'.
"Some of these people are previously of good character and I think some of them have stupidly got dragged into it."
So, how did it all begin? It is unclear exactly when the Yandells's fraud activities date back to but police are certain it goes back many years.
"Originally they'd tried a couple of collisions to get a bit of extra cash," said DC Jon Parkinson. "They realised there was a lot of money to be made."
The Yandells also realised that insurance companies would soon become suspicious if the same names kept cropping up on claims.
To get around this, they began roping in friends and other family members.
The more names and addresses involved, the less risk there was of insurance company fraud investigators smelling a rat.
It worked something like this:
1) The Yandells and their associates would invent car accidents in which one party would pose as the non-fault driver
2) The at-fault vehicle would either have high mileage or be mechanically problematic. No loss as it was worth more as a write-off and money could be made by removing parts, headlamps, gearboxes
3) The non-fault party then submits an insurance claim for damage to their car, personal injury, courtesy car, crash repairs and so on
4) The Yandells would submit fraudulent courtesy car and repair invoices to insurers
5) Other family members and friends or friends-of-friends would then be roped into the deal. They agreed to lie and say they were in the car at the time
6) A flurry of cheques follow ranging from £10,000 to £40,000 per accident - new cars, personal injury payouts, courtesy car charges and bogus repair bills
But the accident had never happened. So, before any inspectors arrived from insurance companies, the Yandells had to make sure the cars looked suitably smashed up.
The gang would damage cars with hammers, or drive cars into one another just outside Easifix compound.
On another occasion, one of the gang is seen deliberately driving a Land Rover into a forklift truck, having remembered to remove light fittings and other working parts beforehand.
When a convincing amount of damage is done to the 4x4, Peter and his son can be seen manually deploying the air bags, which automatically writes off a vehicle, no questions asked.
If the vehicle had a pre-accident value of £5,000, in its damaged state that would fall to just £1,000. The insurance company would pay out £4,000 and the crash "victim" would get to keep the car to sell as salvage.
But the Yandells would fix the car up themselves, sometimes using the parts they took off the vehicle before it was damaged, sometimes using parts from stolen cars. The car would be sold on, as good as new.
'Tip of iceberg'
Another detective on the team, Sara Morris, said they made around £750,000 purely from the cases which reached court.
"This is not including the stolen vehicles. Even then I think that was the tip of the iceberg," Det Con Morris said.
"We think this group of people, the Yandell family, incurred losses from insurers of up to £2m."
But back in August 2011, this was all yet to be discovered.
The paper entitled "What to tell the insurance company" was a big clue for the police that the Yandells's criminality extended beyond car theft. But how would they prove it?
The first port of call for detectives was the two accident management companies Easifix used.
Accident management companies (AMCs) are legitimate intermediaries who can be contacted by a driver who is not at fault. They will handle the insurance claim, repairs, personal injury assistance and provide a like-for-like courtesy car.
These firms came about in the 1980s to address the problem of innocent motorists having to pay upfront for a replacement car after a collision, and wait weeks or even months to be reimbursed by the at-fault party's insurer.
The companies used by the Yandells confirmed to police that they had processed 71 separate claims.
That is maybe not that surprising, given the Yandells were in the crash repair business.
Should a legitimate accident victim bring their damaged car to them, why would they not refer them to an AMC?
It was in the driver's interest and more to the point the Yandells were paid up to £500 for each referral they made to the AMCs.
"On one hand maybe the number of collisions wasn't surprising but then looking at the number of vehicles in the garage, I thought that may be a bit low," said former Det Sgt Andy Cullen, who led the investigation before he retired in 2011.
The books did not add up either.
"There was something strange about Easifix," Mr Cullen adds.
"It appeared to be processing an awful lot of work for friends and family, the accounts showed very little money going through them but there were an awful lot of damaged vehicles and crash parts around the premises. It looked like it was a very busy garage but not making any money. Something wasn't adding up.
"They literally appeared to be a business based on family and friends, a totally unsustainable business, you would think."
Police soon established that the Yandells were not working alone. Another name - Callaghan - kept cropping up in the paperwork.
"It was clear the Callaghans, two brothers and one of their girlfriends, were bringing in people from Cardiff and Caerphilly and the Yandells were bringing in people from the Blackwood area," says Det Con Jon Parkinson.
"If you widen the associates, make the pool a little bigger, it looks less suspect."
Everyone involved in the "accidents" insisted they were random events; that they did not know the people in the other vehicle.
The key to the police inquiry was to prove they were lying. And this is where Facebook came in.
"I don't think they ever expected us to go to into the depth that we did by researching all of the social media," Det Con Sara Morris said.
Any Facebook user, if they are honest, will be familiar with the practice of so-called "Facebook stalking".
Det Con Morris set about doing exactly the same thing. Examining public information from photographs, posts, likes, comments and dates to establish links between the suspects and build a robust case.
"I found pictures on people's accounts who weren't obviously connected," Det Con Morris explained.
"But they had posted photographs of weddings, nights out and christenings which showed many of these individuals knew each other.
"One claim involved Byron Yandell and a woman in one vehicle and they claimed to have a collision with three other people. They said they didn't know each other.
"By researching Facebook and finding pictures of Byron's wedding, we have photos which show quite clearly that they all attended Byron's wedding.
"Another claim involved Patrick Callaghan and a woman. She tried to state they didn't know each other.
"But we found an image showing they had attended the same christening. You could see Patrick outside the church and in the background was the woman."
Anyone could have viewed these pictures - the Yandells' friends and associates had unwittingly joined the dots for the police by posting photos on public Facebook pages.
But for one individual, it was a case of what was not posted on Facebook that set alarm bells ringing.
"One woman lived her entire life on social media," added Det Con Morris.
"She put down what she was having to eat, what she was doing on a daily basis and I would have thought that if she had smashed up her £11,000 BMW, she would have put it on her social media account.
"She didn't. This raised suspicion that these collisions hadn't actually occurred."
Facebook also shed light on the motives behind these crimes.
"By looking at social media, it became quite significant that collisions occurred more frequently when there was a major event coming up, such as Byron and Rachel Yandell's wedding," added Det Con Morris.
The gang, it seems, was faking crashes to order and using the payouts to fund family parties, christenings and holidays.
As well as posting incriminating evidence online, the Yandells and their associates also gave police a helping hand by filming themselves smashing up cars. Criminal masterminds they were not.
"They were clever and stupid in equal measure," said Andy Cullen.
"You're clever if you stay under the radar but you're extremely stupid if you film the criminality you're involved in. They had CCTV at their garage which has been an incredibly effective investigation tool for us."
Ironically, the security cameras the Yandells had installed were to protect their business from other criminals.
Det Con Mike Adams was assigned the arduous role of sitting through 2,600 files of footage, each around one hour long.
He identified two collisions which had been deliberately staged, which proved that the "accidents" later claimed for through an AMC were utterly fraudulent.
"Collisions were alleged to have happened on particular dates but CCTV shows two Audis in questions being damaged two days later," says Det Con Adams.
"The fraud is not just about the collisions. There are extra layers of deceit by claiming for storing and recovery of vehicles and for a hire vehicle.
"One car is on paper as being rented out as a courtesy car but it never leaves the Easifix compound. There is a question over whether it can even be driven as it's moved around on a trolley jack."
The CCTV also shows the Yandells and their cohorts repeatedly driving a Land Rover into a forklift truck. They later claimed it had been involved in a crash a couple of miles away.
"During interviews after their arrest we asked them to give an account of their involvement in collisions, their work at the premises, why they visited so often, their relationship to one another, what they knew about Easifix, if they'd been involved in stealing any vehicles, " Mr Cullen said.
"The vast majority said, 'no comment'.
"It was actually very helpful because we now knew which way we had to go as a team and how much depth we had to go into to prove them wrong.
"They were very confident that we wouldn't get there. But that gave us the incentive to move forward."
The first trial - of Peter, Byron, Michelle, Rachel and Gavin Yandell and Jennifer Cosh, partner of Anthony Callaghan - began in October 2014.
"Before the trial, I was quite nervous," said Det Con Sara Morris.
"I knew we had a lot of overwhelming evidence against them but you can never read a jury."
Only two of the Yandells - Byron and his wife Rachel - gave evidence in their own defence. It turned out to be a disastrous move.
"It was embarrassing to watch," said Det Con Morris.
"The prosecuting barrister tied them up in knots. The lies that were coming out, they were tripping themselves up constantly."
It sealed the deal for the prosecution. All were found guilty of conspiracy to defraud and sentenced between two and six years in prison.
'100 more'
A further 75 convictions followed. The sentencing of the final five, due next week, closes a five-year chapter for the investigative team.
But that is not the end of the story.
Gwent Police are pretty sure around 100 more people are involved.
Phase two of Operation Dino has been given the go ahead so they say there is going to be a few people who thought they had got away with it, looking over their shoulders once more.
It was the biggest insurance fraud Wales has ever seen. But if that was not enough, BBC Wales can reveal Michelle and Peter Yandell were also indicted for benefit fraud.
They had both falsely claimed tens of thousands of pounds for care and mobility allowances.
The case against them was not pursued because they were going to prison anyway.
Week In Week Out: Wales' Great Car Crash Con - Friday, 22 January, at 21:00 GMT on BBC One Wales
Video editing: Philip John
Additional reporting: Delyth Lloyd
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Efforts to protect a section of coastline in east Devon from sea erosion have been hampered by recent stormy weather, a council said. | Cliffs at Pennington Point, near Sidmouth, were to be shored up with shingle dredged from the River Sid.
The material to be used was left on a beach near the river before it was due to be moved to the cliffs.
But the shingle has been washed away by recent high tides and bad weather, East Devon District Council said.
The shingle was to provide short-term protection from tidal erosion.
The district council said it was working with Devon County Council and the Environment Agency to try to find a long-term solution.
Several landslips have occurred around Pennington Point area over recent weeks, closing sections of the coastal footpath.
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From musicals to whodunnits, pantomimes to farces, amateur drama companies have long been a source of entertainment in their communities. In 2020, though, staging plays in small theatres and village halls under social-distancing rules is far from straightforward. | By Stephen StaffordBBC South
The latest government regulations state that amateur arts activities can only take place if there is no mingling between groups of six, and the guidance for working in the arts sector is followed.
There are warnings that with many am-dram groups inactive, audiences' and members' interest could decline and important seedbeds for stage talent could fade away.
So what steps are being taken to try to keep amateur dramatics alive?
"It's a real worry how we will survive financially," said Lewis Carlisle, chairman of Southend Operatic and Dramatic Society.
The 70-strong company was due to be celebrating its 130th anniversary this year but had to cancel its production of the musical Company and is struggling to rehearse for Anything Goes next year.
"It's not just the ticket revenues we're losing - we can't do any publicity, it's hard to charge members, we've no social events or fundraisers. There's no income and no support," Mr Carlisle said.
"We risk losing tens of thousands of pounds if we put a show on and no-one comes.
"So many professional shows are closing - and they have finances behind them. We're just a small group trying our best. I really, really do hope we make it through."
Seasoned amateur theatre watcher Jane Dickerson said she was "heartbroken" at removing cancelled show listings from her amdram.co.uk website that she has run for more than 20 years.
She would usually post information about up to 50 shows a week around the country.
"For older or single people it's their social life - even if it's working backstage or helping out with the teas. That's gone and it's going to take years to recover," she said.
"It's frustrating - the government doesn't seem interested and doesn't realise what effect it's having on communities."
Jack Edwards, chairman of the Portsmouth Players, admitted things were "really tough" for amateur groups. A large-scale production by the group can cost up to £60,000 for venue hire, set, costumes and performance rights.
"My advice is for companies to mothball, probably until there is a vaccine. Sit on the money they've got rather than try to do anything.
"You've got to engage your members. There is the support there, but eventually people will feel they're not getting anything for their subscription money.
"I'm worried a lot of companies won't survive."
Those who insist the show must go on have turned to technology.
In St Albans, the Abbey Theatre's Company of Ten group has live-streamed a sketch show, Radio Fun, and is selling tickets for online performances of Building the Wall.
Chairman Martin Goodman said the theatre had had to "adapt and change".
"It's been a revolution in how we deliver our product to different audiences - and that has been a wonderful thing. Whether it's commercially viable remains to be seen."
The theatre is planning socially distanced plays, with a potential audience of about 50, rather than its capacity of 240.
It is also looking at the idea of staging a youth production with "parallel casts" - having two sets of actors separately rehearse and perform a show to maximise the number of youngsters involved.
"The theatre is run by fanatics who are very focused on carrying on and contributing to our community, so we will find new ways of doing things," Mr Goodman insisted.
Tess Townsend and Marie-José Zuurbier, from West Molesey in Surrey, used online rehearsals as the inspiration for a comedy play when their own group's production was halted.
More than 50 groups have downloaded their scripts of Zoom, A Play for Lockdown to perform using the ubiquitous video-conferencing platform.
"We've always clocked funny things people have done and said in amateur drama groups. Lockdown gave us oodles of time to start writing," Ms Townsend said.
"The saddest thing is that people are missing the communal feel of the am-dram experience - it's a great buzz and we're getting a bit of that feeling from our play."
Birmingham Youth Theatre chairman Linda Hamilton said her 30-strong cast of Shrek was "devastated" when their production was cancelled in April.
The company of nine to 19-year-olds is now hoping to perform it in December at the city's Crescent Theatre.
During the summer they managed socially distanced outdoor rehearsals at Cannon Hill Park as well as regular Zoom rehearsals and quizzes.
"They're a very close-knit family so it was important to maintain the contact," Ms Hamilton said.
"The lockdown has affected them - some are more anxious, but this gives them something different away from the other pressures in life."
Staging a full show in the open air is one way to stay within social-distancing guidelines.
The Questors Theatre in Ealing, west London, took its chances with the British weather to stage The Bard in the Yard, a series of truncated Shakespeare extracts.
For the 30-strong audience it meant putting their names on a contact-tracing list, sanitising hands on entry and using socially distanced outdoor seating.
Artistic director Alex Marker said writers and performers needed to "take the constraints and limitations and turn them into an asset".
"If you set up the ground rules and framework of the world you are in at the outset of the play, the audience will suspend their disbelief and will embrace the event," he said.
It meant moments like the kiss in Romeo and Juliet being represented by the star-crossed lovers removing their face masks, touching them together - with no hand contact - and disposing of them as they exited.
Whether such productions can help amateur groups survive ultimately depends on how long social-distancing restrictions remain in place, according to the Little Theatre Guild which represents 115 groups which own or run theatre buildings.
Having volunteers rather than paid staff has kept costs down and many qualified for the government retail, hospitality and leisure grant of up to £10,000, said its chairman Mike Smith.
Nevertheless, he said the latest coronavirus restrictions had "knocked people's confidence".
"They may dissuade people from coming to watch theatre in confined spaces and there are doubts about whether actors are prepared to act," Mr Smith said.
"Many theatres have small stages, which makes putting on socially distanced shows very difficult.
"In the summer we were beginning to think that we could see ourselves reopening, but that's been put back - many of us won't get going until the new year at the earliest.
"The challenge is keeping people involved and interested.
"Theatre is so strong in Britain - we've got some great companies and we have to be careful not to lose them."
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A nightclub is to remain closed for a month after five men were injured during a violent disturbance in the run up to Christmas. | A brawl outside Niche on Walker Street, Sheffield, saw five men hurt in the early hours of 23 December.
At Sheffield Magistrates' Court, South Yorkshire Police was granted an order to keep the club shut until 6 February.
Two men, aged 19 and 28, have been charged with violent disorder in connection with the incident.
More on this story and others in South Yorkshire
Supt Paul McCurry said: "Closure orders give us another tool to help keep communities safe and prevent further disorder.
"As our inquiries into this incident are ongoing, we continue to liaise with the nightclub owner, our partners at the council and colleagues in legal and licensing teams."
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The Prince of Wales is to visit the Republic of Ireland next month. | Accompanied by his wife, the Duchess of Cornwall, he will also go to Northern Ireland as part of a four-day visit from 19 to 23 May.
Reports suggest he will visit Mullaghmore in County Sligo, where his great-uncle Lord Mountbatten was murdered by the IRA in 1979.
Prince Charles first visited the Republic of Ireland in 1995.
His visit was hailed as a success, and seen as a step on the way towards the eventual visit by the Queen in 2011.
The prince also visited the Republic of Ireland in 2002, but this will be his first official joint visit with the Duchess of Cornwall.
Clarence House said the trip was being held at the request of the British government, and planning was still in progress.
While their itinerary has not been finalised, reports in Dublin suggest that the royal couple could visit Drumcliffe Church, where the poet WB Yeats is buried, and Lissadell House.
'Warm and friendly'
The visit was welcomed by Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade Charlie Flanagan.
"Following the reciprocal state visits of recent years, this visit to Ireland will represent a further expression of the warm and friendly relations which now exist between us," he said.
"We look forward to their arrival next month, and to a visit programme which reflects the quality of these relations."
The royal couple welcomed Irish President Michael D Higgins to the UK during his state visit in April 2014.
The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall most recently visited Northern Ireland together on official visits in April 2014 and in June 2013.
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Nigeria's inspector general of police has banned a notorious unit from carrying out stop and search duties and setting up roadblocks amid growing anger at routine harassment and atrocities allegedly committed by its officers. | Mohammed Adamu also said members of the Special Anti Robbery Squad (SARS) must always wear uniforms.
Videos shared recently on social media appear to show officers extorting money and even shooting people.
Nigerians want SARS disbanded.
The hashtag #EndSARS is trending on Twitter, triggered by the alleged killing of a young man by officers from the unit in the city of Lagos on Saturday.
Many people are also using the hashtag to share stories of brutality attributed to the police unit.
Lagos Governor Sanwo-Olu tweeted on Sunday: "Appropriate actions will be taken, and speedily too".
SARS and other tactical police units have been banned from "invasion of privacy of citizens particularly through indiscriminate and unauthorised search of mobiles, laptops and smart devices," Mr Adamu said in a statement on Sunday.
They should, he said, focus on cases of armed robberies, kidnapping and other violent crimes. He also said that police commissioners and commanders would be held liable for misconduct of officers in the areas they were in charge of.
Three years ago Nigeria's police chief ordered an immediate re-organisation of the SARS after public outcry, but little, if any, changed according to an Amnesty International investigation published in June.
The rights group accused SARS officers of using "torture and other ill-treatment to execute, punish and extract information from suspects".
It documented 82 cases between January 2017 and May 2020.
Amnesty found the group allegedly targeted men between the ages of 17 and 30.
"Young men with dreadlocks, ripped jeans, tattoos, flashy cars or expensive gadgets are frequently targeted by SARS," the organisation said.
"The Nigerian authorities must go beyond lip service and ensure there is real reform, " Osai Ojigho, director of Amnesty International Nigeria, said about the findings.
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A decision about whether plans for the redevelopment of Guernsey Airport's runway complies with environmental laws is expected by July.
| The Environment Department said planning officers would look at the details of the possible impact of the works on the surrounding environment.
Due to the size of the proposed £81m development, an Environmental Impact Assessment has to be carried out.
If agreed, then the plans will be put out to public consultation.
The plans have been put on display for the public to view at the department's offices at Sir Charles Frossard House between 0900-1700 BST on Monday to Friday.
However, the department advised people to wait until the application had past its environmental assessment to make sure they viewed the final product and not a draft.
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There was a time when people with severe mental illness might be given an operation to sever connections in the brain. Lobotomy became one of the most notorious surgical procedures of the 20th Century, writes Claire Prentice, but retired neurosurgeon, Henry Marsh, who once carried out a modified version of the operation, tells her it's wrong to divide doctors into heroes and villains. | It seems incredible today, but lobotomy was once hailed as a miracle cure, portrayed by doctors and the media as "easier than curing a toothache".
More than 20,000 lobotomies were performed in the UK between the early 1940s and the late '70s. They were typically carried out on patients with schizophrenia, severe depression or Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) - but also, in some cases, on people with learning difficulties or problems controlling aggression.
While a minority of people saw an improvement in their symptoms after lobotomy, some were left stupefied, unable to communicate, walk or feed themselves. But it took years for the medical profession to realise that the negative effects outweighed the benefits - and to see that drugs developed in the 1950s were effective and much safer.
Writers and film directors have not been kind to the doctors who carried out lobotomies. From One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and the Netflix spin-off series, Ratched, to Suddenly Last Summer, they portray sadistic surgeons preying on the vulnerable and leaving dead-eyed patients in their wake.
The truth is more complex. Lobotomists were often progressive reformers, driven by a desire to improve the lives of their patients.
In the 1940s, there were no effective treatments for the severely mentally ill. Doctors had experimented with insulin shock therapy and Electro-Convulsive Therapy with limited success and asylums were filled with patients, including shell-shocked soldiers, who had no hope of a cure, or of going home.
It was against this background that Portuguese neurologist Egas Moniz developed the lobotomy - or leucotomy as he called it - in 1935. His procedure involved drilling a pair of holes into the skull and pushing a sharp instrument into the brain tissue. He then swept it from side to side to sever the connections between the frontal lobes and the rest of the brain.
"It was based on this terribly crude, simplistic view of the brain, that the brain was a simple mechanism, and you could just sort of stick things into it. The idea was that you had these thoughts running round and round and by interrupting the circuit you would stop these distressing, obsessional thoughts," says the neurosurgeon and writer, Henry Marsh.
"In reality the brain is utterly complicated and we don't even begin to understand how it all interconnects."
Moniz claimed that his first 20 patients had experienced a dramatic improvement - and a young American neurologist, Walter Freeman, was greatly impressed. With his operating partner, James Watts, he carried out the first lobotomy in the US in 1936; the following year, the New York Times referred to the operation as "the new 'surgery of the soul'". But to begin with it was complicated and time-consuming.
While working at St Elizabeths Hospital in Washington DC, the largest mental hospital in the country, Freeman had been horrified by "the waste of manpower and woman power" he witnessed there. He was keen to help patients get out of hospital, and set himself the goal of making lobotomy quicker and cheaper.
In 1946 he devised the "transorbital lobotomy" in which steel instruments resembling ice picks were hammered into the brain through the fragile bones at the back of the eye sockets. The operating time was drastically reduced, and patients did not need an anaesthetic - they were knocked out before the operation using a portable "Electro-Shock" machine.
Freeman would drive across America during the long summer holidays to conduct his "ice-pick lobotomies" - sometimes taking his children along.
Initially described as a surgery of last resort for psychiatric patients for whom all other treatments had failed, Freeman began to promote lobotomy as a cure for everything from serious mental illness to post-natal depression, severe headaches, chronic pain, nervous indigestion, insomnia and behavioural difficulties.
Many patients and their families were grateful to Freeman, who kept boxes filled with the letters of thanks and Christmas cards they sent him. But in other cases the results were disastrous.
Freeman's patients included Rosemary Kennedy, sister of the future US president John F Kennedy. She was left incontinent and unable to speak clearly after a lobotomy at the age of 23.
Over the course of his career, Freeman conducted lobotomies on 3,500 patients, including 19 children, the youngest just four years old.
Freeman's counterpart in the UK was the neurosurgeon, Sir Wylie McKissock, who carried out his own variation of the lobotomy on about 3,000 patients.
"This is not a time-consuming operation. A competent team in a well-organised mental hospital can do four such operations in two to two-and-a-half hours," he boasted. "The actual bilateral prefrontal leucotomy can be done by a properly trained neurosurgeon in six minutes and seldom takes more than 10 minutes."
Thanks in large part to McKissock, more lobotomies were carried out in the UK, per head of population, than in the US.
As a medical student in the 1970s, Henry Marsh took a job as a psychiatric nursing auxiliary in a mental hospital, on what he describes as "the end-stage ward where the burnt-out cases went to die". There he saw first-hand the devastating effects of lobotomy. "It was painfully apparent to me that there was no proper follow up of these patients at all," he says. "The patients who were the worst, most apathetic, sort of ruined patients were the ones who had been lobectomised."
They had all been operated on by McKissock and his assistants.
Later, after Marsh had qualified as a neurosurgeon, a modification of the procedure, known as a limbic leucotomy, was still in use. Marsh describes it as "a sort of microscopic version, much more refined, of the sort of lobectomies people had been carrying out many years earlier".
He himself performed this operation on a dozen patients with severe OCD until as recently as 1990.
"They were all suicidal, they had failed all other treatments, so you know I didn't feel particularly anguished about it, but I preferred not to do it," he says.
"I didn't see the patients afterwards, I was purely a technician. I was assured by the psychiatrists involved that the operations were a success."
I ask him how he feels about these operations now. "I didn't like doing them, and I was rather glad to give up the practice fairly shortly after I became a consultant."
In the early 1960s, about 500 lobotomies were carried out each year in the UK, down from 1,500 at its peak. By the mid-1970s this number had dropped to around 100-150 a year, nearly always involving smaller cuts and more precise targeting.
The introduction of the 1983 Mental Health Act introduced tighter controls and more oversight. Today psychosurgical operations are rarely carried out.
Howard Dully, who was given a lobotomy by Walter Freeman at the age of 12, says he tries to avoid thinking about how different his life might have been if he hadn't had it, for fear that anger would overwhelm him.
"I've tried to piece my life together. It took a long time," he says. "I got into a lot of trouble as a young adult — drugs, and alcohol and criminal activity, trying to steal and make money and make a living. It's very hard to do."
Dully feels that the operation, carried out because he had been clashing with his stepmother, cast a shadow over every aspect of his life.
"You don't walk up to people and say, 'Hi, I had a lobotomy,' because if you do they ain't going to be around you long," he says.
Sixty years on, he can remember the operation in vivid detail.
"They lifted up the eye and went into the corner and tapped it through and wiggled it around with this egg beater thing," he says.
"To me it's insane. I mean you're talking about a brain. Shouldn't there be some precision involved?
Lobotomy had had its critics from the outset, and the chorus of opposition grew louder as the poor results became apparent.
Walter Freeman, who initially claimed to have a success rate of 85%, was discovered to have a fatality rate of 15%. And when doctors investigated long-term outcomes for his patients they found that just one-third could be regarded as experiencing some improvement, while another third were significantly worse off.
One former advocate for lobotomy in America stated: "Lobotomy was really no more subtle than a gunshot to the head."
Fifteen years ago, a group of doctors and lobotomy victims and their families campaigned to have Egas Moniz stripped of the Nobel Prize for Medicine he won in 1949 for devising lobotomy. But the Nobel Foundation, whose charter states that its awards may not be withdrawn, refused to comply.
Looking back, how should we view the people who carried out this most controversial medical procedure?
"This business of dividing doctors into heroes and villains is wrong. We are all a mix of both, we are a product of our time, of our culture, of our training," says Henry Marsh.
"The generation of surgeons who trained me had, I wouldn't say god-like powers, but they had enormous authority, nobody questioned them or queried them and I can think of some of the people who trained me who were essentially decent people who had been corrupted by this power and became a little bit monstrous as a result."
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For years doctors in the US made little attempt to save the lives of premature babies, but there was one place distressed parents could turn for help - a sideshow on Coney Island. Here one man saved thousands of lives, writes Claire Prentice, and eventually changed the course of American medical science.
How one man saved a generation of premature babies
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Former UKIP Wales leader Nathan Gill has left the party. | The Wales MEP said he can no longer belong to an organisation that has switched its focus from Brexit to a "foolish pursuit against Islam".
"UKIP has betrayed its members," Mr Gill said. He served as Wales party leader from 2014 to 2016, and was an AM until he quit at the end of 2017.
A UKIP Wales spokesman said Mr Gill had been "irrelevant" after quitting the assembly and had "done nothing" since.
It comes after former leader Nigel Farage, who had appointed Mr Gill to the leadership job, left the party.
Mr Farage said the party's leader Gerard Batten seemed to be obsessed with Islam and Tommy Robinson.
Mr Batten has appointed the former English Defence League leader, also known as Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, as an advisor.
In a letter to party chairwoman Kirstan Herriot, Mr Gill said: "I can no longer belong to a party that has switched its primary focus from Brexit, to a foolish pursuit against Islam and the promotion of Tommy Robinson."
He said the party was "giving ammunition to the Remainers by insisting on this association with Tommy Robinson".
Last weekend Mr Batten survived a vote of no confidence at UKIP's ruling body, the National Executive Committee.
But it said it did not endorse Mr Robinson's appointment and he was barred from membership "through his associations".
Proposals for a ballot on Mr Robinson's leadership, which were later put off, prompted concern from two UKIP AMs last month, Michelle Brown and David Rowlands.
Since then, Ms Brown has called for a ballot on Mr Batten's leadership.
A UKIP Wales spokesman said: "Nathan who? I have almost no idea who he is.
"He has been completely irrelevant since he gave up his assembly seat, and has since done nothing."
The spokesman said UKIP Welsh assembly leader Gareth Bennett would not be quitting the party.
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Two more Scottish universities are to offer teacher training courses. | The move has been announced by Education Secretary John Swinney in a bid to tackle a recruitment crisis in the profession.
The Scottish government said it was providing £1.3m to create hundreds more opportunities for people to qualify as teachers.
Edinburgh's Queen Margaret and Napier universities will train new recruits from 2019.
Mr Swinney said the government was addressing difficulties recruiting classroom staff and he hoped this would "build capacity within teacher education".
It comes as the EIS teaching union warned schools are facing a recruitment "crisis" - with this one of the reasons why they are demanding a 10% wage rise for teachers.
'Raising standards'
Edinburgh Napier University will initially offer a total of 30 places on a one-year Professional Graduate Diploma in Education (PGDE) course - which allows those who already have a degree to train as teachers - with a focus on maths and sciences.
It is planned to expand that into areas such as English and computing, with up to 150 training places after three years.
Queen Margaret University will recruit up to 120 students to an undergraduate primary course but will also have 20 places on a PGDE course for those who wish to be home economics teachers.
Mr Swinney said: "Teachers have a key role to play in helping us raise standards and close the attainment gap. That is why we are doing everything we can to attract talented and enthusiastic people to the profession.
"We recognise that, in common with many other countries, it is hard to recruit teachers in the numbers we need, particularly in certain specialist subjects.
"Adding two additional universities to the institutions that offer initial teacher education, supported by £1.3 million investment from the Scottish Government, means we can not only recruit additional teachers to take up post within the next two years but build capacity within teacher education.
"The two new teacher training courses offer more choice and flexibility for anyone considering teaching as a career, especially in the specialist home economic and STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) subjects where we know there are shortages at the moment."
'By teachers, for teachers'
Kenneth Muir, chief executive and registrar of the General Teaching Council for Scotland, hailed the move as a "landmark development in the provision of initial teacher education".
He added: "We must continue to adapt to ensure we do not miss out to other professions on new, high quality teaching talent.
"It is important that high standards are maintained and we will ensure the courses offered by QMU and Napier universities satisfy fully our accreditation criteria."
Alistair Sambell, vice principal and deputy vice chancellor of Edinburgh Napier University, said: "Our new teacher education programme will be designed by teachers, for teachers.
"As a university we have an applied approach to learning, and student placements in schools will be underpinned by practice-based learning in class, supported by practising teachers."
Prof Petra Wend, principal of Queen Margaret University, added: "Teacher education at QMU will offer research-informed, practice-based programmes developed in collaboration with professionals from the sector and inspired by the needs of Scottish children and schools today."
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Rescuers have pulled out nine bodies from the debris of a six-storey building that collapsed in the Pakistani city of Karachi. | The incident took place in the Baghdadi Lane area. A dozen people are still feared trapped under the debris.
Residents were being evacuated from the nearby buildings some of which had suffered visible damage, police said.
Correspondents say there are a number of decrepit buildings in the old city area in the southern parts of Karachi.
Media reports on Friday morning said personnel of the army's engineering corps were helping the civic authorities clear the debris and look for survivors.
Witnesses said there were three bulldozers working on the site, but progress was slow.
They said narrow lanes in the area were preventing effective rescue work.
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It's still more than a month before Donald Trump takes the oath of office, but it's not too early to think about the challenges he will face in the White House. | Anthony ZurcherNorth America reporter@awzurcheron Twitter
The new president will have formidable assets at his disposal. The chief executive has broad unilateral powers, and his party controls both chambers of Congress. As long as Republicans stay unified, they will be able to advance a broad range of conservative priorities that have been on the back-burner for more than a decade.
The danger, however, is that they could choose a losing battle - or a winning one whose victory comes at too high a price.
The history books are littered with presidents whose electoral mandates crumbled in the early days of their presidency. Barack Obama and Democrats saw their large governing majorities in 2009 vanish two years later after a bruising fight to pass healthcare reform.
A push for universal healthcare also cost Bill Clinton dearly in 1993. George HW Bush's presidency ran aground, in part, due to tax concessions he made to Democrats in the 1990 budget negotiations. Ronald Reagan's tax reforms early in his presidency sank his approval ratings before an economic recovery changed his fortunes.
As Mr Trump looks ahead to his presidency, there are countless opportunities - but the path to success is a veritable minefield, where one false step could lead to ruin.
Here's a look at five particularly dangerous potential pitfalls.
Medicare privatisation
Donald Trump campaigned on repealing Barack Obama's healthcare reform programme, and the Republican Congress seems eager to follow through (timeline to be determined, of course).
What Mr Trump didn't campaign on, and yet congressional Republican leadership seems enamoured with, was any kind of modification or privatisation of the government-run healthcare programme for the elderly, Medicare.
In fact, Mr Trump was quite clear that he wouldn't touch the social safety net that provides retirement and medical care for the poor, disabled and elderly.
"Every Republican wants to do a big number on Social Security, they want to do it on Medicare, they want to do it on Medicaid," candidate Trump said at a Republican forum in 2015. "And it's not fair to the people that have been paying in for years and now all of the sudden they want to be cut."
Yet changing Medicare from a government-run, single-payer programme to a state-managed voucher-backed premium support system has long been a goal of House Speaker Paul Ryan.
"Medicare has got some serious problems because of Obamacare," Mr Ryan said a few days after Mr Trump was elected. "Those things are part of our plan to replace Obamacare."
Mr Ryan is the leader of a segment of conservatives who view Medicare as a means of fostering dependence on government - a fortified expansion of centralised power that presents a growing financial burden on the federal budget.
The challenge for Republicans, however, is that, unlike the heavily politicised Obamacare reforms, Medicare is immensely popular. A 2015 poll found 60% of Americans viewed the programme as "working well", and 77% said the programme was "very important".
Back in 2004, newly re-elected President George W Bush and a Republican-controlled Congress made a similar run at privatising Social Security, the government-managed retirement programme.
Those efforts collapsed without so much as a legislative vote, thanks to withering opposition from Democrats and a sceptical public. It marked the beginning of Mr Bush's sharp decline in popularity that culminated in sweeping Democratic victories in the 2006 mid-term elections and President Obama in 2008.
Ann Coulter, a fervent Trump backer, succinctly summed up the shape of the pitfall that now may await her party.
"Medicare IS NOT WHAT THE ELECTION WAS FOUGHT OVER," she tweeted. "If Ryan wants to change Medicare, then run for president on that and see how far you get."
Mind the mine: Misinterpreting your mandate for change is classic post-election overreach danger.
Tax cuts
Although he didn't regularly dwell on it at his campaign rallies, candidate Trump had a fairly detailed tax-cut plan. Perhaps the reason for his reticence was that the benefits - according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center - would be showered primarily on the wealthy.
The average tax cut was pegged at $2,940 per person, amounting to an after-tax income increase of 4.1%. Those earning over $3.7m, however, would receive a tax cut of roughly $1.1m, for an after-tax income boost of 14%.
During the first presidential debate, Hillary Clinton called this "trumped up trickle-down economics" - the theory, first embraced by President Ronald Reagan, that the benefits of tax cuts for the rich would eventually filter onto the lower-income brackets through increased spending.
The label didn't stick (and was, in fact, mocked as being forced), but the attacks may sting if they accompany hard figures in legislation signed by the man who won the White House as a champion of the working class.
There's some sign that the forthcoming Trump administration may already be backing away from this particular political landmine - and heading toward a new one, instead.
During a recent interview Treasury Secretary nominee Steve Mnuchin said that any tax reform would be benefit-neutral for the wealthy.
"Any reductions we have in upper-income taxes will be offset by less deductions, so that there will be no absolute tax cut for the upper class," he said.
While that sounds inoffensive, the two biggest individual tax deductions are also two of the most beloved by the American middle class - for home mortgage interest and charitable donations. Any politicians, Republican or Democrat, touch those at their political peril.
Mind the mine: Mr Trump campaigned against a moneyed global elite. If they reap the rewards of Republican tax reforms, he may lose some of his populist lustre.
Imperial overreach
One of the ways Mr Trump framed himself as a different kind of Republican presidential candidate was by condemning his party's military adventurism.
Where just a decade earlier his party had marched in lockstep behind George W Bush in defending the Iraq War, now Mr Trump stood on a Republican primary debate stage, condemned the action as misguided and won.
He said Libyan intervention was a mistake and that the US should let Russia shoulder more of the military burden in Syria. While he criticised Chinese trade practices, he said US allies in Asia must shoulder more of the costs of their own defence.
Positions like these were largely why the Republican foreign policy establishment abandoned the Trump campaign in droves and why the president-elect has seemed hard-pressed to settle on a nominee for secretary of state.
One man already on the Trump White House team, however, is retired General Michael Flynn - and he appears to support the kind of robust, interventionist foreign policy that Mr Trump dismissed.
In his recent book, The Field of Fight: How We Can Win the Global War Against Radical Islam and Its Allies, the man who is tabbed to become Mr Trump's national security adviser writes that the US is already fighting a global war.
"We face a working coalition that extends from North Korea and China to Russia, Iran, Syria, Cuba, Bolivia, Venezuela and Nicaragua," he writes. "We are under attack, not only from nation-states directly, but also from Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Isis and countless other terrorist groups."
If Mr Flynn is joined on Mr Trump's foreign policy team by someone like John Bolton - an Iraq War architect whose name has been linked to the secretary of state job - President Trump may be considerably more hawkish on foreign policy than Candidate Trump ever was.
Mind the mine: The American public will follow a president into battle, but war is also an easy way to destroy a presidency. Just ask George W Bush. Or Lyndon Johnson. Or Harry Truman.
Going rogue
Mr Trump turned heads this week when he sat down with former Democratic Vice-President Al Gore to discuss climate change and global environmental issues.
He shocked many of his conservative backers a few weeks earlier when, after meeting with Mr Obama, he expressed support for some portions of the president's healthcare reform.
During the campaign he unveiled a childcare and maternity leave proposal that, in the words of conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer, "out-Democrats the Democrats".
In other words, Mr Trump - who was a Democrat as recently as 2009 - has shown a proclivity for entertaining issues and positions that run counter to Republican orthodoxy.
There's certainly an upside for being a president who's willing to buck his own party and reach across the aisle for support. It was at the heart of Bill Clinton's "triangulation" strategy during his presidency, when he adopted and moderated popular Republican positions on welfare reform and crime-fighting to boost his own standing.
Such a course comes with its own set of risks, however, particularly for someone like Mr Trump. Embracing a liberal position could jeopardise his Republican backing in Congress and among the party's grass-roots supporters. Even with his best efforts, however, he will be hard-pressed to attract much love from the political left. His divisive presidential campaign has made him too much of a villain among Democrats for that to happen.
Mind the mine: Only Nixon could go to China, as the saying goes. Mr Trump could decide to break the partisan logjam and advance a popular progressive priority. Then again, when Nixon became mired in scandal, he was left with few Republican allies to protect him. It's not a happy place for a president to be.
Doing nothing
These possible pitfalls are enough to make even the most self-confident of politicians unsteady, reluctant to make a move lest they find the political ground crumbling beneath their feet.
Inaction is not an option for Mr Trump, however. He was elected to get results.
His supporters were so frustrated by years of partisan gridlock that they turned to an outsider - a political novice - in hopes of fixing a system they saw as hopelessly broken. More of the same is a losing proposition.
Mr Trump will have to find some policy wins if he wants to renew his lease on the White House in four years, and a few token wins - a saved Carrier plant here, a slightly less costly Air Force One contract there - likely won't cut it.
Mind the mine: If Trump does too much, he could be ruined. If he does too little, he could be ruined. He already has the lowest recorded popularity of any incoming White House occupant. There's a minefield ahead no matter which way he turns. Presidenting is hard.
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Parts of a fast reactor control room at Dounreay in Caithness look set to be dismantled and rebuilt at the Science Museum in London. | The panels and the control desk from the former experimental nuclear power plant near Thurso would be displayed temporarily at the museum.
It has been proposed to make it a feature of an exhibition in 2016 on nuclear energy.
Work to take apart the control room could start later this year.
The control room was used to run the Dounreay Fast Reactor.
The museum project is mentioned in the new Dounreay Socio Economic Plan annual report.
The Dounreay complex is being demolished and the site cleaned up.
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Fitbit has put on sale its first fully-featured smartwatch. | The Ionic differs from the firm's existing Blaze watch in that third-party developers will be able to release apps and watchface designs that can be installed on the device.
It also introduces a sensor that can detect blood oxygen levels.
Fitbit has also announced a forthcoming "special edition" in partnership with sportswear firm Adidas, mirroring the Apple Watch tie-up with Nike.
Until recently, Fitbit was ranked the world's bestselling wearable tech brand. However, market research firm IDC reported in June that it had been overtaken by both Xiaomi and Apple in terms of shipments over the first three months of the year.
Fitbit recently reported that its second quarter sales were 40% down on 2016's equivalent figure, leading to a $58.2m (£44.9m) net loss for the period.
"It's a tough market for Fitbit - not least the dramatic drop in North American sales it has experienced - and the whole wearables category has certainly not lived up to expectations," commented Ben Wood from the CCS Insight tech consultancy.
"But the firm is continuing to push forward."
The standard version of the Ionic has been priced at £300, making it more expensive than the current cost of Apple's entry-level smartwatch but less costly than the Apple Watch Series 2.
Although Fitbit has started accepting pre-orders, it has said shipments will not start until late September.
Ionic's release has been much-anticipated since Fitbit bought crowdfunding success story Pebble's smartwatch business in 2016.
It cancelled work on Pebble's own devices, but adapted its software to create a new operating system - Fitbit OS - which promises to work with the Android, iOS and Windows platforms.
The San-Francisco-based company aims to release a web tool to allow developers to create their own software for the device from next month.
This will include access to the device's NFC (near-field communication) chip, which could allow it to be used to open vehicles and building doors fitted with compatible smart locks.
By contrast, Apple has locked down access to its own mobile devices' NFC chips on security grounds, although this is expected to be relaxed later this year.
The new device also marks the first time Fitbit has included an SpO2 sensor in one of its wearables.
The component estimates the amount of oxygenated haemoglobin in blood.
The firm suggests this could be used to provide new types of health alerts, including warnings of sleep apnoea - a disorder that causes people to briefly stop breathing or take shallow breaths during rest.
The technology is relatively rare outside of medical equipment, although Nokia does include an SpO2 sensor in its Pulse Ox wristband.
Fitbit also says the Ionic's heart rate tracker is more accurate than those found in its other products.
The new watch's other advertised features include:
"The Ionic is very much orientated towards being fitness-first rather than fashion-first, and that will be a challenge," said Mr Wood.
"But the firm has a loyal group of users who seem interested in upgrading to a new Fitbit product that is more capable.
"The social element of its brand has also been a big success -where you get groups of people competing over the number of steps they have taken among other things - which should help sales."
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In the wake of last month's murder of an anti-mining activist in rural South Africa, the BBC's Pumza Fihlani travelled to the once peaceful community in KwaZulu-Natal, now plagued by tensions and death threats. | We drive in a convoy of two vehicles, weaving our way deep inside a forest in northern KwaZulu-Natal, to see two men who have demanded a meeting place away from curious eyes.
Fikile Ntshangase, who was fighting a plan to start an opencast mine on the site of her village, was shot dead not far from here and the men tell me they are fearful that they could be next.
"We don't sleep at night, we don't know who to trust any more, not even our own families," one says as we sit between tall eucalyptus trees.
"We never thought not coming to an agreement as a community could lead, would lead, to someone's death, especially because the mine is still operating," he continues, his face visibly weary.
The man, who cannot be identified for his safety, is referring to Tendele's Somkhele mine which has been open since 2006.
The company wants to expand its operations by 22,000 hectares and this would mean about 200 families in the villages of Ophondweni and Emalahleni would need to be relocated.
Tendele has offered compensation to those who have agreed to move and some 140 families have said they would sell.
Its boss Jan du Preez says that accusations that its plans are linked to Ms Ntshangase's death are unfounded.
And in a statement sending condolences to her family, the company condemned "any forms of violence and intimidation in the strongest possible terms".
We travel to Ophondweni, where livestock graze on the lush, rolling hills and brightly coloured houses dot the countryside.
It seems peaceful on the surface but we quickly learn there are divisions and tensions here.
Some of those who are willing to sell up see this as a chance for a more modern and perhaps fancier lifestyle. But for others it was a matter of security.
'Death threats'
"Our mother lives there alone and we felt she would be safer if we agreed to sell because many people there want this to happen," one man, who asked not to be named, told me.
"We didn't want to put her life in danger. What if she gets shot too?"
Another man tells me: "We're getting death threats because we don't want to relocate."
He is one of the people who are fighting to stay in put.
"One of us received a message warning that if we continue with the fight, they will kill the breadwinner in each family because our decision to stay is putting miners' jobs at risk," he adds.
Mining is one of South Africa's oldest industries but there are concerns about air pollution and health problems for those living in mining communities, as well as the loss of grazing land.
But the authorities here have to weigh that up with the country's urgent need to bolster the economy and provide jobs. As a result businesses can have great sway on the minds of the decision makers.
Buried underneath the beautiful rural setting are huge deposits of anthracite, the highest quality of coal, which is mainly used in steel manufacturing.
As the country's biggest anthracite producer, the expansion, if it goes ahead, would mean big business for Tendele.
Shot six times in her house
But that cannot happen until it overcomes the objections of the 21 families who have taken the company to court over the move. The legal battle is being led by a local group called the Mfolozi Community Environmental Justice Organisation (Mcejo).
Ms Ntshangase was a senior member of Mcejo and some community members believe it was this ongoing dispute that led to the 65-year-old's killing.
Those who knew her describe her as "kind but feisty", never one to back down from what she believed was a fight for justice.
Late last month, three armed men entered her home and shot her six times.
Her daughter Malungelo Xakaza tells me she is still struggling to come to terms with the loss.
"Opencast mining is not good for this area so that's what she was trying to put out there for the people… and unfortunately she started getting threats and then this happened," she says.
No-one has been arrested for Ms Ntshangase's death and police told the BBC that the motive for the murder is still unknown.
"We live in fear but we try to put on a brave face. We don't want to leave our home because we feel close to her here, this is where she lived and this is where she passed away," the 30-year-old tells me.
'This land is all we have'
The anti-mining activist was not the first one in her group to be targeted. A few months ago, another opponent of the expansion, Tholakele Mthembu, was lucky to escape unharmed, after 19 shots were fired into her home.
Ancestral land carries deep meaning in rural communities and it is more than just a place to live.
Back among the tall eucalyptus trees, one of the men explains, with defiance in his voice, the significance.
"This land is all we have… I have raised my children here and it helps me take care of my livestock.
"Land is wealth for us in rural communities, there is nothing better, not even money. We're clear that our land is not for sale," the elderly man adds.
But Tendele looks at securing a different economic future for the community and says the mine's expansion will bring in needed jobs.
"There's a dispute because they do not want to accept our offers but we are continuing to work with these families. Clearly we want a win for everyone in the community," company boss Mr Du Preez tells the BBC in his Johannesburg office.
Development front line
Those living in fear amid the negotiations say the mining company is not doing enough to bring calm. But Mr Du Preez says these claims are unfounded and says there is no connection to the alleged intimidation.
"We have to find a way that we can hear each other and listen to each other otherwise clearly the risk of future violence is horrendous."
The need to balance economic benefits with environmental concerns and the ancestral attachment to the land has turned this rural community into the front line of a battle familiar across the developing world.
But whatever happens with the mine, life has changed for the people of Ophondweni as peace hangs in the balance for this once united community.
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Jesus Aceves was born with a rare condition that means he has thick hair all over his face. About 30 members of his family also have hypertrichosis making them almost certainly the hairiest family in human history. They feature in a documentary Chuy, The Wolf Man by film-maker Eva Aridjis which is being released in Mexico this month. | By Sara LentatiBBC World Service
As a child, the thick, dark hair that covers his entire face quickly earned Aceves the nickname "The Little Wolf". He grew up in the small town of Loreto in north-west Mexico where, as a result of his appearance, his family was shunned by the local community.
By the age of 12 he had started travelling from city to city to work at fairgrounds. One summer he sold tickets for a Ferris wheel, another year he ran a stall where people popped balloons to win prizes. It was there that a circus owner spotted him.
Find out more
"My life in the circus started when I was 13," Aceves says in Eva Aridjis's film, Chuy, The Wolf Man. The circus owner asked if any other family members had the same condition - and by this time Aceves' two younger cousins, Larry and Danny, had also been born with hypertrichosis.
"The man said he'd pay us well and said he wanted all of us. He said he would house us and there'd be money. I said, 'Yes.'"
The three boys were signed up by the circus and spent several years travelling around Mexico where they used to greet the audience and have their picture taken.
Accompanied by Aceves's mother, they always had somewhere comfortable to stay and plenty of food to eat but there was one thing that he didn't like.
"We were always locked up. They were presenting us as attractions so we couldn't be seen on the street. I didn't like that, being locked up so people wouldn't see us."
As a young child, Aceves had wanted to hide away. He didn't like going outside and at school he was bullied by other children, who pulled his facial hair and called him names. But his self-esteem grew stronger as he grow older. Now, even at the age of 41, he has conflicting emotions of shame and pride in being who he is.
He says doesn't regret having worked in circuses.
"It's not a bad place where you make money doing something bad. It's a decent job. As an artist you entertain people and make them laugh," he says.
But there was one tough time, touring the US with an American circus, when he became seriously depressed. Lonely, isolated, and unable to speak much English, he almost drank himself to death.
"I used to drink a lot of beer. I would never eat and my liver was killing me… I wanted to liberate myself with the drinking. But I was doing the opposite, I was destroying myself," he says.
Fortunately he pulled through and went on to perform in circuses all over the world.
He learned to walk the high wire as part of an act in Coney Island's Sideshow and how to walk up a ladder of swords while travelling with the Circus of Horrors, which brought him to the UK in 2012.
Aceves had hoped to make enough money to set up a small business near the home he shared with his partner, Victoria, and youngest daughter, Araceli, in the state of Mexico.
But their 10-year relationship broke down soon after his return from the UK and he's now back in the family home in Loreto, earning money by picking beans on a farm.
Aceves and most of his family live in two houses, next door to each other, that were given to them by the mayor when Aceves and his cousins were young, because no-one would rent them a home. One house was for Aceves's mother and the other for Larry and Danny's mother. Today, each holds about 10 family members.
Aceves has three daughters, all of whom have been born with hypertrichosis. His eldest, Karla, is now in her early 20s. Her mother left when she was a baby and because her father was always away she was raised by her grandmother.
"It's harder for the women because it's less socially acceptable for a woman to be very hairy," says Eva Aridjis. "Most of the women have been abandoned by the non-hairy partners that fathered their children. But for the men, they are actually considered virile and tend to have a lot of girlfriends.
"Karla is the only one in the family who has finished high school but she still has a hard time finding work."
After giving birth to a baby, she was abandoned by the child's father.
"He's now in the US, in Texas, and she's a single mother," says Aridjis.
Aceves's great-grandmother was the first of his relatives to be born with excessive hair on her face. Now about half of his family have the genetic mutation.
Other cases of hypertrichosis
"No-one's really sure what causes hypertrichosis, or how to cure it. What they do know is that there are about 50 documented cases in human history and it was my fate to be one of them," says Aceves. "We are the hairiest family of our species."
In Aceves's family, the X chromosome appears to be the location of the mutation. "This means that for the men who have this mutation, all of their daughters will inherit it but none of their sons. And the women who have the gene, half of their children will also have hypertrichosis, regardless of whether they're male or female," says Aridjis.
"Scientists have studied Aceves and his family. They were particularly interested in this excess of hair because they wanted to find a cure for alopecia - for baldness. They know it's a gene that has laid dormant for a very long time which suddenly resurfaces, but they don't know how to turn it on or off."
Aceves trims the hair on his face and some of the women in his family shave their faces.
"The women tend to have beards and hair on their foreheads so it's a little sparser. For the men it's impossible to shave completely because they have hair on their nose and eyelids. They can't afford afford electrolysis or anything hi-tech," says Aridjis.
While these other procedures, such as laser hair removal, would help reduce the total amount of hair, they would not permanently remove it.
Aceves has not done any circus work for a couple of years and says he has no plans to return to it in the future.
He is now determined to ensure all the younger members of his family born with hypertrichosis get an education, and have the confidence to look for jobs beyond circuses, freak shows and "wolf" roles.
In the past, some of them have begun circus work before they can even walk. One of Aceves's nephews, Derian, was one year old when a circus owner came to their home to make an offer. Derian's mother, Gladys, had been adamant that her two sons would finish school, but with no partner to support her she made the difficult decision to let people stare and touch her son for a small fee.
She spent a few weeks travelling with a circus, presenting her little boy to the crowds as "Derian from the Wolf Boys".
Aceves' cousin Danny, with whom he began his life in the circus, also continued with it and was taken on by a well-known clown who taught him acrobatics, how to swing on the trapeze, and his favourite discipline - the trampoline.
Another cousin, Eliud, is thinking about enhancing his circus act by growing his hair longer and replacing his incisor teeth with prosthetic fangs. One day he hopes to own his own circus.
Other family members, though, have succeeded in forging other careers. Aceves's sister Lilia was, until recently, a police officer in Zacatecas. And his cousin Larry now lives in San Bernadino in California, where he runs his own business renting out bouncy castles and other party equipment.
All his life, Aceves has been compared to a wolf. Sometimes wolf howls follow him down the street. In the opening scene of Aridjis's film, he visits a zoo in Mexico City in order to see one of the animals up close.
"Both of our faces are covered in hair and we both live trapped - them in the zoo and me in this body," he says. "At least the wolves treat me the same as they treat other humans."
Interviews with Jesus Aceves and images courtesy of Eva Aridjis, who made the documentary Chuy, The Wolf Man.
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It was reported on Tuesday that a North Korean diplomat in London, Thae Yong Ho, had defected to a third country. The BBC's Korea correspondent, Steve Evans, has pleasant memories of Mr Thae - who, he says, always seemed unusually at home in the suburbs of West London. | The last time I saw Thae Yong Ho was in an Indian restaurant in Acton, in West London. He was eating a curry, but without rice - we had been discussing pre-diabetes, a condition which middle-aged men who enjoy food come to think about a lot, usually at the suggestion of their doctors.
His GP had told him that he should think of diabetes as a monster running towards him. He could slow it down or he could speed it up, but towards him it was coming. Rice and other carbohydrates would bring the monster closer faster.
Now the curries will have to be elsewhere - in Seoul, with a bit of luck. He is here with his family after disappearing from London. His stint as a diplomat for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, as he called North Korea, came to an end earlier in the summer and he told me he was returning with his family to Pyongyang.
But he wasn't. He is a dark horse - but of course he had to be. He worked for a regime which has a history of abducting people and the least hint of defection would have landed him in deep trouble.
Thinking about it though, the signs were there. I recall he asked me about life in Seoul. I told him it was a mega-bustling city, a world away from Pyongyang .
But he seemed so British. He seemed so at home. He seemed so middle-class, so conservative, so dapper. He would have fitted in nicely in suburbia.
In fact, he did fit in nicely in suburbia. He told me how he had been passing the local tennis club in Ealing and had seen a sign asking for new members. In he went and joined, and became a stalwart of the tennis club.
He took to tennis when his wife complained about his obsession with golf. There must be a million conversations like it in the shires - his wife told him it was either golf or her. If he didn't put down the putter, she was off to Pyongyang.
For North Koreans, as for everyone else, love (often) conquers all. So he put down the golf bag and took up the tennis racket which - the tennis club being closer - left him more time for home.
We often talked of family - and health. The children of North Korean diplomats in Britain go to local state schools. They sometimes note how their children's first words of English are "Stop doing that!" or "Enough!" - echoing the teachers of Acton.
Mr Thae's son had a degree in the economics of public health from a British university. His son had concluded from his studies that what Pyongyang really needed to make it a world-class city was more disabled parking spaces.
I'm no expert in these things but I am sceptical. Of all the things Pyongyang needs, more parking space for the disabled is not top of the list. More cars, maybe. More freedom, certainly. Disabled parking can come later. That is my opinion.
Mr Thae had done his duty, going round Britain promoting the country's ideology. He gave a talk to the Revolutionary Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist) where he bemoaned British house prices. He would tell his friends how much he paid to rent a house in Acton and they assumed it must be a mansion with a swimming pool rather than a small semi. Despite that, he has chosen not to have the free accommodation he cited as one of the benefits of life in Pyongyang.
I am pleased at his decision. Who knows how much agony there must have been wrestling with the choice. When I met him, it was always with another diplomat present - that's the way Pyongyang keeps control - one diplomat watches the other for disloyalty.
He had never given any hint of disloyalty to the regime, not a flicker of doubt. But when you talk to North Korean officials you know where the red lines are.
In Pyongyang there are the hardliners from the security agency - hatchet-faced men with bulges under their identical suits - but there are also the minders from the foreign ministry, with whom human engagement is possible. They can be helpful, though never disloyal to the regime. It is more than their jobs are worth - more than their lives are worth.
And so it was with Mr Thae - helpful within the constraints of his job. I should say that while there is no doubt fear in the minds of public officials there is also, I think, genuine patriotism and even pride in the country.
Mr Thae must have done a lot of dirty work, despite showing such a charming face to me in the curry house in Acton. Was he one of the two men who turned up at the barber's shop in London to complain about the picture of Kim Jong-un with the caption, "Bad hair day?"
Did he follow North Korean defectors in the Korean enclave in New Malden in South London? I don't know, but it was part of the job as a representative of Pyongyang's despotism.
He was one of the minders escorting Kim Jong-un's brother to an Eric Clapton concert in the Albert Hall - he is the balding man seen in the first few seconds of this video:
According to the South Korean media, the diplomat has defected because of pressure from Pyongyang to counter bad publicity. In this regard the BBC - to its great credit - may be to blame. On our last trip to North Korea, BBC reports upset the regime greatly. My colleague, Rupert Wingfield-Hayes, was banned from the country for life and was lucky not to get hard labour.
I can imagine the phone calls: "How could you let this happen?" "Why did you trust the capitalist lackeys?" They had already said the opening of the BBC's new Korean Service would be viewed as an act of war.
If you were Mr Thae, what would you do? Get on the plane to Pyongyang to get more abuse and perhaps even severe punishment, or seek asylum with your family in the UK, or perhaps the US?
I do not know - but there's got to be a spy novel or a movie in it. Despite the skulduggery which Mr Thae may have been involved in, I like him. It should be a movie with a happy ending, perhaps with Mr Thae playing tennis in his later years, perhaps on the hard courts of South Korea.
Better still on the gentle grass of Britain.
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Six adults and three youths have appeared in court charged in connection with a spate of violent disturbances in Leeds on Bonfire Night last year. | Several police officers were hurt as groups threw fireworks and set bins alight in the Harehills area.
Roads were also barricaded and police vehicles, buses and cars were damaged.
A total of 13 people have been charged with violent disorder, but only nine turned up for the hearing at Leeds Magistrates' Court.
Nine of the accused
Read more stories from across Yorkshire
They were all released on bail and are due to appear at Leeds Crown Court on 12 November.
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They were one of America's favourite families in the late 1980s and '90s - with their affectionate bickering, everyday crises, growing pains and belly laughs beamed into more than 20 million homes in the US. | By Ian YoungsEntertainment reporter
Now the Conners are coming back, more than 20 years after the last episode of Roseanne was aired.
All the original cast are returning - after getting up to some successful and surprising stuff in the intervening two decades.
Roseanne Barr
In another reality, instead of President Trump, we might now be talking about President Barr.
In 2012, the real Roseanne ran for president. She didn't get very near the White House, though - she failed to gain the presidential nomination for the Green Party and ended up running for the Peace and Freedom Party, gaining 67,000 votes.
As well as that, she's had her own talk show, done stand-up comedy, judged Last Comic Standing, hosted Momsters: When Moms Go Bad and starred in the reality show Roseanne's Nuts, about her macadamia nut farm in Hawaii.
And in 2015, she revealed she has macular degeneration and glaucoma, saying at the time her vision was "closing in now".
John Goodman
Goodman was brilliant as Roseanne's husband Dan and he's remained one of America's best-loved actors, plying his trade in films like The Big Lebowski, The Flintstones, 10 Cloverfield Lane and Kong: Skull Island.
On TV, he's starred in political comedy Alpha House and middle-age coming-out sitcom Normal, Ohio - and reunited with Barr for a pilot of a sitcom called Downwardly Mobile in 2012. But it was never made into a series.
That same year he spoke about a 30-year battle with alcoholism, telling the Guardian: "It was becoming more and more debilitating. It was life or death. It was time to stop."
Laurie Metcalf
Metcalf found fame as Roseanne's little sister Jackie, but has certainly stepped out of her on-screen big sister's shadow.
She's had Emmy nominations for guest spots in 3rd Rock from the Sun, Monk and Desperate Housewives - and in 2016 got a hat-trick of Emmy nominations in a single year, for Getting On, Big Bang Theory and Horace and Pete.
On stage, she's had four Tony Award nominations for her appearances on Broadway - including for Misery in 2016 and A Doll's House, Part 2 this year.
Sara Gilbert
Gilbert, who played sardonic younger daughter Darlene, is now a co-host and executive producer of CBS talk show The Talk.
She hosts with Sharon Osbourne, Aisha Tyler (both pictured), Sheryl Underwood and Julie Chen - who shared the Daytime Emmy Award for outstanding entertainment talk show host last month.
She's also had parts in The Big Bang Theory, Twins, The Class and ER and has published a book called The Imperfect Environmentalist, A Practical Guide to Clearing Your Body, Detoxing Your Home, and Saving the Earth (Without Losing Your Mind).
She's married to hit songwriter and one quarter of Four Non Blondes Linda Perry, and recently got together with John Goodman to give us a taste of what a Roseanne reunion might look like.
Michael Fishman
DJ - Roseanne and Dan's son - is all grown up.
Fishman, who started out in Roseanne at the age of six, went back to high school to study performing arts and technical theatre craft. He continued to have small roles in TV shows and films, and became a co-host on Barr's talk show.
His Facebook biog says: "In recent years Michael has continued his pursuit of acting while gaining technical acclaim with an eye toward producing and directing."
Lecy Goranson
Lecy Goranson played older daughter Becky for five seasons until she went to college, after which Sarah Chalke took over the role. However, Goranson returned, on and off, towards the end of the show's life.
Goranson will play Becky in the reboot. However, in a nice touch, ABC says Chalke will also appear, but in "another role".
Since Roseanne, the actress has had small parts in films like Hilary Swank's Oscar winner Boys Don't Cry and guest starred in TV shows including Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and Sex and the City.
Johnny Galecki
Not many people have had major parts in two of the biggest sitcoms in American TV history.
But Galecki, who appeared as Darlene's boyfriend-then-husband David Healy in Roseanne, went on to (and still does) play Leonard in The Big Bang Theory.
In between, he played Mark Corrigan in the (terrible looking) pilot for an American version of British comedy Peep Show.
Reports say he's expected to return to Roseanne in some way - although this hasn't been confirmed by ABC.
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A new road sign in honour of Dame Shirley Bassey outside the Children's Hospital for Wales has a typo in it. | The singer is a patron of the Noah's Ark Appeal, a charity set up to fund the building, and it named the walkway outside the Cardiff hospital Dame Shirley Bassey Way.
However, the Welsh version on the sign says Ffordd Y Fonsig Shirley Bassey. The Welsh word for dame is Fonesig.
A Noah's Ark spokeswoman said action will be taken to rectify the mistake.
"It is a shame that this has detracted attention from the occasion," she added.
Related Internet Links
Home - Noah's Ark Children's Hospital Charity
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When he was 11 years old, Dave Grohl was convinced he was going to die. | By Mark SavageBBC music reporter
It was the early 1980s, when terms like Armageddon, nuclear winter and mutually-assured destruction were as common as quarantine or lockdown are today.
Growing up within spitting distance of the Pentagon and the White House in Washington, DC, Grohl concluded that "if there was a war, we would be the first people to die".
"I would have these dreams of missiles in the sky and soldiers in my back yard," he says. "I vividly remember a dream where I was standing in my back yard and I saw a soldier come out from behind a tree and, as I turned to run back to my bedroom, I was shot in the back.
"So I just always imagined that there was going to be a war and that's how I would die at 11 or 12 years old."
Spoiler alert: He didn't die.
Instead, Grohl went on to become the drummer for Nirvana, the frontman of Foo Fighters, a noted documentary-maker and the all-round Nicest Man In Rock™.
But those childhood fears came flooding back in 2019 when his daughter Harper stopped him in the middle of the school run and asked, "Dad, is there going to be a war?"
"I guess that she'd turned on the television and had seen something about North Korea or Iran, or whatever it was," he says. "But it immediately brought me back to those dreams, and it was heart-breaking to think that she was feeling that same hopeless fear that I had when I was a kid."
The realisation prompted him to write a song - Waiting On A War - about finding light in the darkness. A day later, it had been recorded for inclusion on Foo Fighters' 10th album.
"It's a very difficult time for any kid, with the pandemic and the quarantines and lockdowns," says Grohl.
"I think it's important to somehow instil hope, not just in our kids but in the world, because I've always considered myself a hopeful person. It's the thing that gets me to the end of every day."
'Music saved my life'
Resilience and optimism are the keystones of the Foo Fighters' story.
Grohl almost turned his back on music in 1994, after Kurt Cobain's death from suicide. Lost and grief-stricken, the musician "turned off all the amplifiers and put all of the instruments in their cases".
"The heartbreak was so raw that it was almost impossible just to pick up an instrument and play," he recalls.
But after six months of paralysing inertia, he came to a realisation: "Music had been saving my life my entire life, and that's what I needed most now."
He picked up the phone and booked a week in the studio. Although he wasn't known for his songwriting - receiving credit on only a handful of Nirvana songs - Grohl had been making music since his teens, using two cassette recorders to layer up instruments and vocals in his family home.
Later, in Seattle, he cadged studio time from his room-mate and producer Barrett Jones, using spare tape from other bands' sessions to record his own "experiments".
"It would just go super-fast, never more than half an hour, because I didn't want to inconvenience my friend," he recalls. "I'd run from the drum set to the guitar, from the guitar to the bass, maybe do a quick vocal and then make a cassette copy of what I just recorded, bring it back to the house and listen to it and think, 'Okay, on to the next one'.
"I never imagined that I would jump up on stage with a guitar and sing them."
The idea of standing in the spotlight was still an anathema when, in October 1994, Grohl booked a week in Washington's Robert Lang Studios and laid down some of the songs he'd squirrelled away over the last 10 years.
In a flurry of musical catharsis, and playing every instrument himself, the musician recorded 15 tracks in the first four days, laid down his vocals on the fifth, mixed it on the sixth, and then ran off 100 copies on cassette.
"I remember standing at the desk at the tape duplication place, picking the font for the lettering on the cassette and that, to me, was the most exciting thing - just deciding the type face!
"I didn't know who I was giving the [tapes] to. It just felt good to hold them in my hand and know that I'd done it."
Hoping to remain anonymous, he labelled the cassettes "Foo Fighters Rough Mixes" - in the belief a fake band name would throw people off his scent - and stored them in the back of his truck. Over the next few weeks, he gave them to anyone who would listen, from Nirvana fans who approached him in the street to strangers he met at gas stations.
Two copies turned out to be crucial. The first went to Nirvana's touring guitarist Pat Smear, who told Grohl he was "blown away" by the results and joined the star on stage when the fake band became a real one. The other ended up with Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder, who played two songs (Exhausted and Gas Chamber) on his radio show in January 1995.
Pretty soon, music industry bigwigs started sniffing around the demos and a bidding war broke out. Grohl eventually signed a distribution deal with Capitol Records that gave his own label, Roswell, ultimate control over the material and the bulk of the profits.
By July 1995, Grohl's exploratory, unadorned demos were on the shelves of Tower Records and Virgin Megastores as Foo Fighters' debut album. It went on to sell more than two million copies.
Fast forward 25 years and Foo Fighters are one of the biggest bands on the planet - stadium-filling festival headliners, who were invited to play at Joe Biden's inauguration concert last week.
That's partly thanks to tracks like Times Like These and Best Of You: heavy but melodic and commercial without chasing trends, and best played loud (the volume knob in Grohl's home studio goes up to a Spinal Tap-eclipsing 18).
But their success is also due to Grohl's industriousness: Foo Fighters write, record and tour the way bands did in the 1970s. Even a broken leg couldn't stop them from playing shows in 2015, with Grohl fulfilling his frontman duties while seated in a custom-made throne.
Which is why 2020 was like torture for the 51-year-old. The band were ready to release their 10th album, Medicine At Midnight, at the start of the year, supported by a celebratory 25th anniversary tour. Then Covid struck "and everything just stopped, and there was silence," says Grohl.
Foos Gold
He decamped to Hawaii with his family, cooking and home-schooling while going "stir crazy" trying to figure out when concerts could resume, allowing the album to come out.
"After months of waiting and waiting, and waiting, I finally realised that these songs were meant to be heard: No matter whether it is in a stadium or a festival or in your home alone or in your car as you sit in traffic."
Like many of the Foo Fighters' recent albums, Medicine At Midnight was written to self-imposed creative boundaries.
Whereas 2011's Wasting Light was recorded live to tape in a garage; and 2014's Sonic Highways was a musical history of America's recording studios; Medicine At Midnight is the band's "party record".
Based on grooves instead of riffs, it was inspired by the disco-rock experiments of Bowie's Let's Dance, Queen's Another One Bites The Dust and Prince's 1999. To the horror of drummer Taylor Hawkins, some of the songs are even based on drum loops.
"Damn right, Taylor was resistant," laughs Grohl. "And, of course, I'm a huge believer in the human element of music, but this time we decided, 'OK, let's stretch a little bit, do something that might surprise us.'
"There are songs we recorded that didn't make the album because they sounded too much like the Foo Fighters, to be honest. I kind of wanted to stretch."
The results are most obvious on the album's lead single, Shame Shame - whose supple, funky rhythms sound unlike anything the band have ever released before.
"I've always loved dance and disco, funk and R&B," says Grohl. "As a drummer, a lot of my favourite albums are based on the rhythm - but I've never been in a band that played that type of music.
"So, when I reference Let's Dance by David Bowie, it has so much to do with the rhythmic quality of that record. It's the engine that makes that music move, and that's the thing that I've never really peeled back with the Foo Fighters - so this time it was priority number one. Like, this is where it's going to start."
To be honest, fans probably won't be freaked out by this new direction. The core DNA of the Foo Fighters sound remains intact beneath those drum loops and bass grooves, and Grohl's facility with a melody - arguably the band's secret weapon - remains undiminished.
That's particularly apparent on Chasing Birds, a delicate, pretty ballad that's been pulled from the Paul McCartney songbook.
"You know, to me dissonance and chaos is easy," says Grohl. "Having listened to a lot of very difficult music in my formative years, I eventually found that the challenge of simplicity and melody is more rewarding than just screaming feedback and distorted drums.
"I realised that when I was in Nirvana," he continues. "Kurt's songwriting was very simple and, ultimately, it really grabbed people's hearts because of its simplicity and melody. But, yeah, it's not easy to do."
A family affair
To concentrate on his songwriting, Grohl abandoned his home studio during the making of Medicine At Midnight and rented a "funky old house down the street from where I live" in Encino, California.
The sessions were so productive that the band ended up recording the whole album there... which led to an unintended addition to the line-up: Grohl's 14-year-old daughter, Violet.
"At around two or three o'clock [every day] I would take a break and go pick her up from school," the singer explains. "Sometimes she'd want to come back to the house and she'd sit on the couch and do her homework.
"One day, [producer] Greg Kurstin said, 'Hey Violet, would you like to do a back-up vocal?' And she got behind the microphone, she did a few takes and on the chorus of Making A Fire, that's Violet's high vocal in there.
"It seemed very natural [but] it didn't seem official until my accountant called a few months ago and asked where she should deposit Violet's cheque.
"And I said, 'What are you talking about?' She said, 'Well, she sang on the album so she has to be paid for playing on the record.' And I said, 'You can take that money and give it to me, and I'll put it in an account for Violet that she can open when she's 18 years old!'"
It's not Violet's first time performing with her dad - she even sang Heart Shaped Box at a Nirvana reunion last year - and Grohl is touchingly enthusiastic about her musical abilities.
"Violet is an incredibly talented musician," he says. "She can pick up an instrument and learn it within a week. She has perfect pitch and sings from her gut. And she's well aware that she's the best vocalist in the Grohl family.
"To be her drummer is one of my life dreams."
For now, though, Violet is at home school, and the Foo Fighters are swinging back into action - albeit a limited, Covid-curtailed sort of action, full of TV appearances and virtual performances instead of a full-blown tour.
At Joe Biden's inauguration last week, they played a reflective version of Times Like These - selecting the song for its message of healing and unity.
"This is a bit morbid, but whenever someone close to me has passed away, I've always found that you have to do everything in life once without them before you can move on," explains Grohl. "So you have to learn to live again, you have to learn to love again.
"There's optimism in the lyric and it seemed to make perfect sense because of everything our country has been through."
As the child of a Republican speech-writer and a liberal public school teacher, Grohl believes there is still hope that America's bitter political divisions can be healed.
"I was raised somewhere in the middle and I realised that these things can co-exist somehow," he says. "It's never easy. But there has to be some sort of co-operation or understanding or collaboration to keep the wheels from falling off - and that was the way I grew up."
So would he ever consider running for office himself?
"Absolutely not!" he laughs. "It's hard enough to be the singer of the Foo Fighters, I can't imagine being the effing president."
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Meet Kristi Merritt, from Washington in the US. | By BBC TrendingWhat's popular and why
She's posed for a string of photographs that compare dressing up as a Mexican, or a pirate, to being transgender.
More than 70,000 people have shared the images that Merritt posted to Facebook, and more than thirty thousand have hit the like button. But many are unhappy about the comparison, and it's triggered a slew of negative articles online as well.
The caption accompanying the pictures reads: "A man in women's clothes does not make him a woman. Men should not get to be in our bathrooms or lockers!" which explains Merritt's bone of contention.
It's the battle over what have been dubbed "bathroom bills".
Some argue that allowing transgender women to use facilities designated for women will protect their dignity and safety. But others - Merritt included - make the point that it could offer a loophole to male sexual predators who want to gain access to female only spaces.
Across the US there is a complex patchwork of laws governing which public toilets transgender people can use. In some places they can choose whichever they feel they identify with - men's or women's. In others, they are forced to use the one that matches their biological sex. Federal laws clash with state laws, which may themselves overrule local government decisions. The matter is far from settled - in North Carolina an ordinance was recently rolled back, so transgender people who had been able to choose must now use the bathroom that corresponds with their biology.
Messages on the post were limited to Merritt's friends and were mostly sympathetic. "This is not hate speech, this is basic common sense," and "seems to me she has a point," wrote two users. Not all of her friends agreed, however. "These posts are PURE ignorance. Please keep your hate to yourself. It's just a bathroom!" wrote another.
Some Facebook users started sending abusive messages to Merritt, which she reposted under the photographs. "Your kind are at an end. Fear me... I am coming," read one of the messages. Others reported the posts to Facebook for containing nudity, in an apparent attempt to have them removed from the site, although they still appear at the time of writing.
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Join the conversation on this and other stories here.
Pro-transgender rights campaigners have seen social media posts about the issue go viral on numerous occasions. Last year Michael C. Hughes, a transgender man, posted this image to Twitter, which was shared more than 4,000 times.
Hughes told BBC Trending he thought Merritt was "coming from a place of ignorance". In addition to his view that transgender people had a basic right to use the bathroom they identified with, he says efforts to legislate against that could actually prove dangerous.
"Not for myself, I'm 6 feet tall so it's the women who would be afraid of me. The real safety issue comes for transgender women being forced into men's facilities."
We have asked Merritt for comment but not yet heard back.
Next story Is Hollywood 'whitewashing'?
The casting of Scarlett Johansson in an Asian role leads to accusations of 'whitewashing'.READ MORE
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The first Guantanamo hearing for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four others accused over the 9/11 attacks turned into a series of disputes between defendants, lawyers and the court, writes the BBC's Steve Kingstone. | As courtroom dramas go, this one veered wildly between suspense, tragedy, farce and black comedy.
Early in the hearing, one of the accused, Ramzi Binalshibh, got up from his chair and began to pray.
"When detainees stand up, the guards get excited," observed the judge, Col James Pohl, with studied understatement.
Proceedings were interrupted for several minutes as the defendant continued his prayer, kneeling on the courtroom floor.
Another alleged terrorist, Waleed bin Attash, had begun the day restrained in his chair.
"Can I assume he was not coming here voluntarily today?" asked Judge Pohl drily.
With the defendant apparently in discomfort and unable to reach his headphones, his defence lawyer offered a guarantee.
"He has assured me he will not misbehave if the restraints are removed," explained Captain Michael Schwartz. The judge concurred.
Testing the limits
Before long, however, it was clear that none of the accused was wearing the court-supplied headphones providing simultaneous Arabic translation.
After a recess, the judge accepted the prosecution's offer to bring an interpreter physically into the court, to relay proceedings aloud in Arabic. "We'll have to do this in bite-sized chunks," Judge Pohl advised.
Therein followed several hours of painfully slow legal back-and-forth.
First, over whether the defendants recognised their court-appointed defence lawyers. Next, whether civilian lawyers were suitably prepared to assist to the defence, in a military case that could carry the death penalty.
And finally, over whether Judge Pohl was sufficiently removed from the events of 9/11 to oversee the biggest terror trial of our times. He was asked by defence lawyers to confirm that none of his family had been killed or injured in the attacks.
At one point during the morning, the video feed to watching reporters was briefly cut, as the hearing took a turn towards matters considered sensitive or classified. Such interruptions have been strongly challenged by the defence and human rights groups, who call them censorship.
When the feed resumed, we were given clues as to what had transpired. "The warning light went off because the word 'torture' was used," observed David Nevin, the civilian lawyer for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
"I'm trying to work out where the line is," observed Captain Schwartz, the lawyer for Waleed bin Attash. He added wryly that it appeared as if the line was drawn at "embarrassing for the government".
Tiny acts of resistance
All of which presents the defendants with a problem.
If, as appears to be the case, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed wants to argue that this entire process lacks legitimacy because he was water-boarded before being brought to Guantanamo, he will want the world to know about it.
But unless the rules are changed, the details may never become public.
The alleged mastermind of 11 September spent much of the day hunched over a desk, looking older than his 47 years.
His silent defiance was a far cry from past theatrics here. In previous appearances he had boasted of having plotted 9/11 "from A to Z," proclaimed that he wished to die a martyr, and even ordered a court sketch artist to redraw his nose.
This time, acts of resistance were small and presented through lawyers.
David Nevin, representing Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, complained that his client had not been allowed to wear the clothes he had brought for him.
Instead, the Guantanamo authorities had stripped-searched the defendants, then supplied them with white Pakistani-style dress.
Virtually all the defence lawyers chipped in with criticism, collectively implying that the enforced dress code was a control tactic.
Long after night fell, the session ended with a formal reading of the charge sheet, which details the steps these men allegedly took to plan mass murder.
It also lists the 2,976 people killed on 11 September 2001, some of whom had relatives watching in court.
Several had told me they were here to bear witness to justice. But even if this court is to offer closure, on this day's evidence it will be a long time coming.
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Venezuelan papers are rife with reports that robbers are picking different kinds of locks these days - locks of hair stolen from women to sell in the country's lucrative beauty business. The president says its a rumour designed to make young people paranoid. Even if it is, what does it say about the things Venezuelans value most? | By Irene CaselliBBC News, Venezuela
It's the latest trend in Venezuela's crime industry - stealing women's hair. The longer, the better.
It's been happening in Maracaibo, the country's second largest city. For a couple of weeks, newspapers have been dedicating daily headlines to the crime. Victims have said they were approached by a group of two or three. While one person held them down and threatened them, the other would demand that they put their hair up in a ponytail - and then cut it off with gardening shears.
Online publications have been giving tips on how to avoid having one's hair stolen by covering it with a cap or scarf. One website posted a four-minute video tutorial on how to put one's hair up in a bun by using a sock.
I found myself watching it, although my own haircut is so short that thieves wouldn't even approach me.
Hair theft is not a particularly original crime. In South Africa, men have been robbed of their dreadlocks. Cases have also been reported in Burma - and closer to home for me - next door in Colombia and Brazil.
The usual explanation for such theft is that hair is simply sold on to make wigs and extensions. But in Venezuela, many other theories have sprung up to explain the phenomenon. It seems that for commentators, stealing hair is a reflection of the country's many ills. For example, an editorial in the newspaper El Nacional blamed its "beauty culture" for the thefts.
Venezuela does take beauty seriously. It has racked up more Miss Universes and Miss Worlds than anywhere else, and other women feel the pressure on a daily basis. Breast implants are a common present for 15-year-olds. Make-up is a must at all times - even in the gym.
Manes of trailing hair extensions are part of this, although I never understood the hype. I used to have long hair myself. When I got tired of it, I cut it off. If I want it long again, I guess I'll just wait until it grows.
But Daniel, my hairdresser, tells me Venezuelan women are impatient with their hair and don't take enough care of it. They dye it, they straighten it, they do whatever it takes for it to look good all the time. That's why extensions are so popular, he says. They are quick and yet they look real.
With these considerations in mind, the newspaper's editorial may even make sense. If women here are willing to go as far as having aesthetic or plastic surgery - which can be dangerous and sometimes even leads to death - then it makes sense that violence infiltrates the realm of beauty. But does the newspaper maybe suggest that women themselves are the ones to blame?
Las Piranas - as the hair thieves are known - are mostly female. But violence is a much deeper issue in this country. According to the UN, Venezuela now has the fifth highest murder rate in the world. Kidnappings are so common that many well-to-do families share a fund with friends, so they always have easy-to-access cash if one of their loved ones is snatched. With such high levels of crime and impunity, it is understandable that thieves try to take advantage of what has become a lucrative market.
Hair extensions don't come cheap. A full head can cost as much as 10,000 bolivares - nearly $1,500 at the official exchange rate. This means a thief can earn up to $500 for a good chunk of hair.
The hair theft phenomenon isn't as simple as it seems. So far, no formal complaints have been filed. The news stories are based on testimonies of a few victims in local media. But here in Venezuela, paranoia is rampant. In Caracas, the capital, there have been no reports of the crime. But people are already worrying. The other night, a woman told me that she wasn't sure whether it was worse for thieves to go for her hair or for her wallet.
And some women are even choosing to cut their hair before someone else snatches it. Daniel, my hairdresser, says my short, basic cut may even become fashionable soon.
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Anzac Day - 25 April - is probably Australia's most important national occasion. It marks the anniversary of the first campaign that led to major casualties for Australian and New Zealand forces during World War One and commemorates all the conflicts that followed. This year marks the centenary of that first bloody battle on the shores of Gallipoli. | By Clarissa Sebag-MontefioreSydney
In September 1915, as fighting raged in the trenches of Gallipoli on Turkey's northwest coast, an impromptu ceasefire saw a remarkable act of friendship between enemies.
"We threw some tinned beef and jam over to [the Turks], they soon raked them in to their trenches, and in return they threw tobacco and cigarette papers," wrote Australian soldier Idris Charles Pike in a letter to his sweetheart Violet.
Words, as well as gifts, were exchanged. The Turks wrote a note in French thanking the Australians for the goods. They signed off: "Your soldier Friends Turks."
A century later, Pike's letters to the woman who would become his wife inspired a group of Australian and New Zealand artists to visit Gallipoli - making a pilgrimage that in recent years has become almost a rite of passage for many of their countrymen.
Gallipoli, a major allied failure in the First World War, looms large in Australia and New Zealand's collective memory. It is seen by many as a key event in the emergence of national identities for both countries.
The result of two trips in 2013 and 2014, where the 16 artists painted on site, is a major exhibition opening this month in Sydney before it travels the country. Your Friend The Enemy marks 100 years since the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (Anzac) landed at Gallipoli on 25 April 1915.
"It was a bit of a shock," recalls Idris Murphy, one of the artists and the grandson of Pike, of his time on the rocky peninsula that juts into the Aegean Sea.
"How beautiful it was, how sad it was. You are standing on your forebear's bones."
Hidden love letters
Murphy's connection to Gallipoli first developed when he saw a book of photographs of Australian soldiers who had fought in WWI. Among the hundreds of anonymous faces in the book, the artist recognised his grandfather.
The photo had been taken in the village of Vignacourt, two hours north of Paris. Pike's identity was later confirmed by the Australian War Memorial.
After the death of his mother in 2012, squirreled away among the family papers Murphy found 160 letters his grandfather had written to his sweetheart Violet.
"They are love letters. Hidden for the best part of 90 odd years, packed away in a box," says Murphy.
"No one ever talked about the war. When my grandfather came back all they wanted to do was forget. He didn't even open his medals."
Pike, who was born in London and emigrated to Australia as a teen, met Violet at Sunday school. At age 19, he enlisted in a war that would change them both. From Gallipoli he wrote to her: "I simply hunger for your letters. I am not the fun and easy Charlie you used to know."
The young soldier described being caked in mud, noted the "great respect" the enemy showed the men from the antipodes, and wondered if "I will ever be able to dance with you again" or stroll down Bondi Beach on a Sunday afternoon.
The Australian landscape has played a large part in both the history of the country's art and the upcoming exhibition, says Mr Murphy.
"The exhibition is about the land, how it changes us, how we respond to it, how we are buried in it."
Leo Robba, another artist on the Your Friend the Enemy project, remembers a guide telling him on the Gallipoli trip: "The blood and the bones of the fallen had changed the landscape forever."
"That really resonated with me," he says.
Just a little boy
For the exhibition, Robba has painted 100 WWI-era tobacco and matchbox tins with miniature landscapes and soldier portraits. Among them is a portrait of Private James Martin, the youngest soldier to have fought in Gallipoli. He died just short of his 15th birthday.
The artist, whose son is the same age, recalls finding an old photo of Martin wearing a jacket that was too big for him.
"He was just a little boy," he says.
Robba's paintings are like miniature tombs, he says, "a memory box of someone's travels".
The metaphor remains significant in Gallipoli, where human remains from the war are still found to this day.
"There was never any closure. Nobody ever got to bury their dead," says Amanda Penrose Hart, another artist whose work will be shown in the exhibition. Her grandfather's brother died at Gallipoli.
Gallipoli, she says, has become "part of our psyche".
Murphy hopes the exhibition has avoided any suggestion of jingoism. "After all, the title is Your Friend The Enemy," he says.
"It's about human relationships and tragedy. And what it means to be a human being trying to deal with life and death."
Your Friend The Enemy opens at Sydney's S. H. Ervin Gallery from 17 April to 24 May, and at the ANU Drill Hall Gallery in Canberra from 11 April to 17 May, before touring parts of the country.
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The Accident and Emergency department at Leicester Royal Infirmary is asking the public not to visit, unless there is a real emergency.
| It follows a huge rush after the slight thaw in the weather temperatures.
Staff there are redirecting people to use NHS walk-in centres, urgent care centres or NHS Direct instead.
A hospital spokesman said that, because urgent cases were treated first in A&E, non-emergency patients might face a four-hour wait.
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There is arguably no worse place in the world to be gay than Africa. Today more than two-thirds of African countries have laws criminalising homosexual acts and across the continent the imprisonment, murder and abuse of gays has become part of the fabric of society. | By Navdip DhariwalSouth Africa
So to many Africans the Rainbow Flag, which has emerged as one of the most powerful and recognisable 21st Century symbols of gay rights, is an unknown quantity.
Now tourism chiefs in South Africa want to transform the "Rainbow Nation" into a tourist safe-haven for gay and lesbian travellers.
Cape Town is hoping to usurp Rio, Toronto and Tel Aviv to become the world's favourite gay destination and win a big slice of the "pink tourism" market which is worth an estimated $80bn ($50bn) worldwide.
'Most wanted'
South Africa has the continent's only opened gay only hotel.
The eight double rooms in Cape Town's Amsterdam House, founded in 1998, are usually fully booked.
The hotel's manager, Lourens Botha, says other businesses are benefiting from the regular influx of gay visitors.
"Other hotels have experienced a downturn," said Mr Botha. "But we are experiencing consistent business and a high rate of returning gay travellers.
"In South Africa we have had our own challenges. Under apartheid you couldn't admit to being homosexual. You would be persecuted and imprisoned.
"This is now happening in other parts of Africa but our liberty allows us to help our fellow African gays.
"Today I run a hotel where openly gay men from all over Africa come and feel comfortable. They are astonished at how relaxed things are here.
"In their home countries they face persecution, violence and even death but here, if only on holiday, they can be free".
Last year, in a survey carried out by the publication Out There, North American travellers ranked South Africa as the third "most wanted" travel destination.
Cape Town, where 10% of all tourists who visit the city are said to be gay, also won status as a worldwide favourite by Out and About magazine.
And according to the International Global Gay and Lesbian Travel Association (IGLTA) South Africa, and Cape Town in particular, may soon realise its ambition to become the number one destination in the gay market.
Last year alone an estimated 200,000 gay tourists holidayed in Cape Town.
'Walk on the beaches'
South Africa's laws and constitution have helped to make all this possible.
It was the first country in Africa to legalise same-sex marriage, and only the fifth in the world to do so.
And today the Rainbow Nation remains the only country on the African continent that accepts same-sex relationships, after gay rights were enshrined in the post-apartheid constitution, drawn up 19 years ago.
Eugene Brockman of IGLTA South Africa believes the country is becoming a safe haven for gays across the continent.
"The popularity of the Rainbow Nation amongst gay travellers is thanks to liberal laws and the fact that this is the only place in Africa where you can be openly gay.
"You can walk on the beaches, go on safari and eat in restaurants as gay partners.
"We are also attracting gays from all over Africa itself and for those forced to stay in the closet in their home countries, South Africa is liberating."
Businesses across the country are also becoming more aware of the value of the pink rand.
This year the United Nations World Tourism Organization singled out South Africa in its Global Report on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) tourism.
It said progressive attitudes in South Africa as well as Argentina, India, Spain and Mexico had attracted the gay market in droves.
It cited events such as Gay Pride, the Pink Loerie Mardi Gras, the Out in Africa Film Festival, Mother City Queer Projects and Mr Gay South Africa as some of the reasons for its popularity.
Prejudice remains
But not everyone is comfortable with this progressive attitude.
There are reports that the National House of Traditional Leaders, which advises the government on traditional customs of ethnic groups, has called for parliament to restrict gay and lesbian rights.
But the City Press newspaper says the ruling ANC is committed to equality and the right to freedom of sexual expression.
Fanney Tismong, an acclaimed Johannesburg based film-maker who specialises in gay issues and township life, says huge strides have been achieved in South Africa but he agrees deep prejudices still remain in many parts of the country.
He explains that lesbian women in South Africa are still targeted for so-called "corrective rape" and many gays in the townships live in fear of sexual assault and murder.
More than 30 women have been killed in South Africa in the past two years because of their sexuality.
"We have an established gay film festival, Out in Africa, which allows us to platform same-sex couples issues and these matters are now being openly discussed in the media and by mainstream society.
"As a consequence, gay couples are increasingly receiving a lot of support in South Africa.
"But there are still issues, particularly for the lesbian community in the country who have experienced shocking discrimination.
"We are making progress and we stand out alone in this regard in Africa, but we are not quite at the end of the rainbow yet".
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On the day George Orwell's statue was unveiled outside the BBC's Broadcasting House, it seems fitting that the government finds itself fending off accusations it has distorted and misrepresented the English language for political expediency in a way that would make the writer fume. | By Ben WrightPolitical correspondent, BBC News
Boris Johnson is in hot water, again, over what he said to a meeting of the Commons foreign affairs committee last week.
Speaking about the case of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who remains in prison in Iran, Mr Johnson said, "when we look at what Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was doing, she was simply teaching people journalism, as I understand it, at the very limit".
But Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe's family and the British government have always insisted she was in Iran visiting family when she was arrested in 2016.
And now in an effort to hose the situation down and minimise any damage to Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe's case, the foreign secretary has told his Iranian counterpart that while he accepted his remarks at the committee "could have been clearer" he was seeking to condemn "the Iranian view that training journalists was a crime".
But that is not what he said to the Commons committee last week and Labour MPs are certainly furious at this latest diplomatic fumble by the foreign secretary.
It will not, however, result in his dismissal from the cabinet.
The foreign secretary said his comments had no impact on the case in Iran, a view echoed by his Iranian counterpart.
That certainly helps Mr Johnson weather this latest storm. But more fundamentally, Theresa May does not have the political strength to dismiss one of the cabinet's big Brexit-supporting beasts.
If she had a Commons majority and a united cabinet she might feel British diplomacy could be more effectively carried out by someone else. But her government is fragile.
After Michael Fallon left his post as defence secretary last week another cabinet departure would look like a government unravelling. It is the same reason Priti Patel is still in her job.
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Amber Rudd has resigned as home secretary after a period of political pressure stemming from her handling of the Windrush scandal. Here is the resignation letter she sent to Prime Minister Theresa May. Mrs May's response is also published in full below. | Dear Prime Minister,
It is with great regret that I am resigning as home secretary. I feel it is necessary to do so because I inadvertently misled the Home Affairs Select Committee over targets for removal of illegal immigrants during their questions on Windrush.
Since appearing before the select committee, I have reviewed the advice I was given on this issue and become aware of information provided to my office which makes mention of targets. I should have been aware of this, and I take full responsibility for the fact that I was not.
The Windrush scandal has rightly shone a light on an important issue for our country. As so often, the instincts of the British people are right. They want people who have a right to live here to be treated fairly and humanely, which has sometimes not been the case. But they also want the government to remove those who don't have the right to be here. I had hoped in coming months to devise a policy that would allow the government to meet both these vital objectives - including bringing forward urgent legislation to ensure the rights of the Windrush generation are protected. The task force is working well, the residence cards are being issued well within the two weeks promised, and the design of the compensation scheme is making good progress.
The Home Office is one of the great offices of state and its job is to keep people safe. It comes with the responsibility to fight terrorism, support and challenge the police and protect people against the abuse, as well as manage migration.
It has been a great privilege to serve as your home secretary. I have seen first-hand the second to none commitment and bravery of our police, fire and intelligence services, they truly are the best in the world and we should rightly be extremely proud of them.
I have been particularly pleased that we were able to set up the first Global Internet Forum for Counter Terrorism which has led the way with encouraging social media sites to go further and faster in taking down radicalising and terrorist material, which plays such a dangerous part in increasing extremism.
Setting out new laws to tackle the scourge of knife crime and acid attacks and helping to steer our young people away from a life of crime and violence by providing them with credible alternatives have been particularly important to me.
Opportunities to work on issues that safeguard the vulnerable, champions women and make a lasting impact on people's lives particularly stand out for me. New policies to fight domestic violence and abuse against women are out to consultation, and will lead this country to taking a new approach. Helping to bring thousands of refugees, including child refugees from both Calais and the Middle East region, and meeting some of the families who fled the terrible situation in Syria and have now been given a chance to rebuild their lives here in the UK in safety and security is something we can be proud of.
It has been an honour to work on a new security treaty with the EU as part of our new partnership going forward and to participate in your Brexit sub-committee helping to ensure that we have the best possible EU deal for our economy, businesses, jobs and people across the UK.
The new Economic Crime Centre that i launched with the first use of unexplained wealth orders will be important to the confidence of London as a financial centre.
I will continue to support the Home Office ministerial team whenever possible on all these important subjects, supporting the government from the back benches and continuing to work hard for my constituents of Hastings and Rye.
Best wishes,
Amber Rudd
Here is the prime minister's response:
Dear Amber,
Thank you for your letter of this evening tendering your resignation as home secretary. I was very sorry to receive it, but understand your reasons for doing so.
When you addressed the House of Commons and the Home Affairs Select Committee last week on the issue of illegal immigration, you answered the questions put to you in good faith. People who have entered the United Kingdom illegally or overstayed here should expect to face the full force of the law and know that they will be removed if they will not leave this country voluntarily. Just as importantly, people who have come here legally and enriched the life of our country should not expect the state unreasonably to challenge their presence here; rather, it should help them prove their right to continue living here and contributing to the life of our nation.
Under your tenure, the Home Office has been working to enforce a firm but fair immigration policy - working to increase the number of illegal migrants we remove, while ensuring that we continue to recognise the huge contribution of everyone who has come to the UK legally, and remain open to the brightest and best from across the globe.
When you spoke in the House of Commons, you said that you had not agreed specific removal targets, but that the Home Office's Immigration Enforcement command had been using local targets for internal performance management. You also said that you were not aware that those operational targets had been set.
I understand why, now that you have had chance to review the advice that you have received on this issue, you have made the decision you have made and taken responsibility for inadvertently misleading the Home Affairs Select Committee.
I am very sorry to see you leaving the Home Office, but you should take great pride in what you have achieved there - working with internet service providers to set up the first Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism and take extremist and terrorist content offline; countering the cyber threat to British families and businesses; standing up for the victims of crime, abuse and domestic violence; offering shelter to refugees from Syria and elsewhere; and advancing the cause of equality as minister for women and equalities.
This comes on top of the considerable contribution you have made to Government since 2012 - first as a whip, then as minister and subsequently secretary of state at the department for energy and climate change - as well as the devoted service you have always given, and will continue to give, to your constituents in Hastings and Rye.
As a former home secretary myself, I appreciate the particular demands of that great office of state. You should take great pride in the way you have led the Home Office and its dedicated public servants through a number of serious challenges, including five terrorist incidents and other complex national events. You have done so with great integrity, compassion, and selflessness - notwithstanding the personal and political challenges you have faced during this period.
I know that you have a great contribution still to make to national life, and look forward to seeing you do so.
Yours,
Theresa
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The way people in Jersey get their national newspaper could change.
| The agreement between Jersey and the National Publishers Association is due to end later this year.
The National Publishers Association said negotiations will begin soon, and one of the possibilities is that newspapers could come to the island later each day.
Jersey Airport is paid about £350,000 a year to open early for the arrival of the mail and newspaper plane.
The National Publishers Association in the UK contributes towards the bill for opening the runway early.
Senator Paul Routier, who has political responsibility for the airport, said the £350,000 a year is used to cover the cost of opening early.
He said the cost covers bringing in air traffic controllers and the fire service early, and the runway needs to be checked for debris.
"A whole host of things need to be checked before the plane can come in," Senator Routier said.
Earlier this week the Financial Times raised its Channel Islands price by 30p to £2.30 blaming the rising cost of sending newspapers to the islands.
Negotiations will start soon between the States and the National Publishers Association to draw up a new agreement.
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Two burglars armed with bolt cutters stopped to feed a pet llama at a farm park - before carrying on with their raid. | The pair of thieves were caught on camera giving carrots to family favourite Larry the llama, at the Raglan attraction in Monmouthshire.
Raglan Farm Park owner Gareth Williams said the men later made off with power tools.
Police have appealed for information.
Officers were called out to the farm after the break-in during the early hours of Friday morning.
"They caused a lot of damage where they broke in and were here for 40 minutes - so they had a good look around," said Mr Williams.
"Security has been tightened to avoid repeat visits."
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Managing road verges like a hay meadow can create habitats rich in wildlife, according to a new report commissioned by Scottish Natural Heritage. | Experts said when and how often roadsides were cut were key to their suitability to plants and animals.
Cutting verges too early can prevent wild flowers from growing, and cutting them too short can stop small animals from moving in.
But allowing them to become overgrown can drown out rare plants like orchids.
The report's authors said hay meadow-style management meant some sites could now be regarded as relics of a habitat that had been in decline.
They said the wildlife drawn to roadsides included skylarks.
The report pointed out that passing traffic was an obvious hazard to birds and animals moving into verge habitats.
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A second gecko in two weeks has accidentally been brought back to Swansea from a holiday. | The small lizard was found in a suitcase after a trip to Spain and taken to Llys Nini Animal Centre.
The RSPCA said it was most likely a Moorish gecko, also known as a common wall gecko, which can grow up to 15cm (6in).
Last month a couple from Swansea found a tiny gecko in their luggage after returning from the Caribbean.
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Facebook says its number of teenage users is stable. | Interview by Jonathan Blake, words by Jimmy BlakeNewsbeat reporters
The social network is marking its 10th birthday and some research claims it is now less popular among teens.
Facebook hasn't released age-related figures but says it has 33 million UK users.
"We know young people are always interested in trying different things but Facebook, we feel, will always be the core," said Facebook's Iain Mackenzie.
"It's the place where they have their real identity - where their friends and their family are and it's somewhere that people always come back to."
To mark the occasion, Newsbeat asked listeners if there were any changes they would like to see on the site.
Thumbs down
Facbook claims there are more than six billion likes per day on the site, but Douglas said: "10 years and we are still looking for the thumbs down icon."
Mackenzie said: "We're much more about the positive at Facebook so if you like something you can give it a thumbs up, if you're not so keen then maybe express your opinion by expressing a comment."
Twenty-four hour response
Facebook says that keeping its users safe has been "a learning process".
The social network, which claims to have 1.23 billion active users worldwide, has recently offered those who report abuse or inappropriate content more information about how their complaint is dealt with.
Joe asked: "Why is the content not better policed? How are live beheadings, animal cruelty, bullying, etc. acceptable yet show nudity and the picture is removed?"
Mackenzie said: "We have a huge team of policy people who make the rules to keep Facebook safe for the millions of people who use it.
"Then we have a team of user operations specialists who are based around the world.
"They work 24 hours a day to respond to the reports that we receive from users when they're unhappy or want to complain about something and they review those against the rules."
Amazing, magic algorithm
Amy asked: "Why do you decide whose posts I see on my newsfeed? I just want to see all my friends' posts."
Mackenzie said: "The big, amazing, magic algorithm. We have this system which calculates what's most likely to be of interest to you.
"Now the algorithm doesn't get it right all the time but most of the time it gets it about right.
"It works out the kind of people that you engage with and talk to the most and the sort of people whose pages you click on."
Ten more years?
When asked if Facebook will still be here in another 10 years Mackenzie said: "I think and I hope that Facebook is going to be around in 10 years' time.
"Who knows how it will look? We will always take the lead from the people who use the service and we'll build things that we hope they will find useful, fun and interesting."
Follow @BBCNewsbeat on Twitter
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A man with the eye-catching name Batman bin Suparman has been jailed on theft and drugs charges. Well before this case, his double-barrelled superhero name had given him something of cult following on social media. | By BBC TrendingWhat's popular and why
The jokes on social media are aplenty following the news that a 23-year-old man, Batman bin Suparman, has been given a prison sentence of 33 months by a court in Singapore. Batman was arrested after being caught stealing money from a shop, as well as using his brother's cash card to withdraw money. Far-fetched as it seems, this unusual name does appear to be entirely genuine - and it's not gone unnoticed.
Back in May 2008, a Singaporean ID card belonging to one Batman bin Suparman began being widely shared on social media. It was picked up by the blog Gizmodo and ran from there. Since then, the picture has been re-posted over 300 times, there have been more 15,000 tweets using his name, and a Facebook fan page has been set up in his honour. It has more than 11,000 followers.
Batman bin Suparman's family appear to be originally from the Indonesia island of Java - where the name Suparman is very common, explains Ben Zimmer, a language columnist for the Wall Street Journal, who has worked in Indonesia and who has written about Suparman.
"Su" has Sanskrit origins and is a common prefix in Indonesia, featuring in a whole rung of Indonesian presidents' names - including the current one Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. "Bin" means "son of" in Arabic, making it very likely that Batman's father was also called Suparman.
The Batman part is a bit harder to explain, however says Zimmer, as it's not a traditional name in the region. The most likely explanation is that his parents chose it as a joke - Batman the superhero is popular there, and Indonesians are often playful in the names they choose, says Zimmer. "I see the name as this interesting juxtaposition of local naming with Western pop culture."
Zimmer, for one, says he was sad to hear the news of Batman's arrest and sentencing. He believes one of the reasons he became such a star on social media was because of how how young and innocent he looked.
Reporting by Cordelia Hebblethwaite
Have you got a very unusual name? Tweet us using #BBCtrending
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A 50-year-old diver has died after suffering a cardiac arrest at Dorothea Quarry in Gwynedd. | Emergency services including an RAF search and rescue helicopter were called to the water-filled quarry at about 12:50 BST on Saturday.
North Wales Police said the man later died.
A spokesman said the man's family has been informed and the coroner has been notified.
The flooded quarry in the Nantlle valley has become a popular site with divers since it ended operations in the 1970s.
There have been about 20 deaths there since 1990.
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A community hydro power scheme has been given the go ahead in Aberdeen, harnessing energy from the River Don. | The Donside Hydro project is aimed at powering about 130 homes on the site of the former Donside paper mill, as well as selling energy to the National Grid.
Aberdeen Community Energy (ACE) is now hoping to attract investment.
ACE founding director Sinclair Laing said: "We have been working towards launching the scheme for the past three years."
Construction is planned for late May.
Related Internet Links
ACE
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A man is to be charged with murdering a teenage boy who died from injuries he suffered 15 years earlier as a baby. | Jack Mitchell, 15, from Harwich in Essex, died on 13 March 2016.
A post-mortem examination found his cause of death to be a pulmonary infection and pneumonia as a result of injuries he suffered as a baby.
John Doak, 36, of Delgate Avenue in Spalding, Lincolnshire, has been summonsed to appear at Chelmsford Magistrates' Court on Wednesday.
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Police have launched a murder inquiry after a man was found dead with what are thought to be stab wounds. | Emergency services were called to a property on Victoria Road, South Shields at 03:52 BST, where they found the body of 24-year-old Brandon Lee, of Wansbeck Road, Jarrow.
A 23-year-old man was arrested at the property on suspicion of murder.
Northumbria Police said it was being treated as an isolated incident, and appealed for information.
Related Internet Links
Northumbria Police
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A seal named in honour of NHS fundraiser Captain Sir Tom Moore is due to be released back into the sea after nearly dying after becoming separated from its mother. | The pup was found alone on the sand at Holkham beach in Norfolk in May.
Rescuers said the seal, which weighed 9kg (20lb), would not have survived on its own.
It was taken to Sea Life Hunstanton's seal rescue centre for rehabilitation and is to return to the sea next week.
Staff at the centre named the pup Sir Tom Moore after the 100-year-old, who raised more than £30m for the health service, and fed him a diet of fish soup.
Find BBC News: East of England on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. If you have a story suggestion email [email protected]
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Two men have been arrested after the body of a 20-year-old man was found on a beach in Newquay, Cornwall.
| The body of Luke Griffin, from Stroud, Gloucestershire, was found on Great Western Beach on Saturday morning.
He was visiting as part of an end-of-season football tour with his club, Leonard Stanley AFC, with 19 others.
Devon and Cornwall Police said two 41-year-old men from Bedford were arrested in connection with the death. They were released on bail until September.
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The inevitability of Sean Quinn's jailing at the hands of Justice Dunne, does not diminish the jaw-dropping shock at seeing him taken from the Four Courts to Mountjoy jail in a prison van. | By Jim FitzpatrickBBC NI economics and business editor
People talk about the ongoing Quinn saga, but this tale is much more in the mould of Greek tragedy than Norse myth.
The fates decreed that the man who once was Ireland's richest, would end up in prison, because all the other elements of Greek tragedy were there from the beginning.
The first is hamartia - a tragic human flaw.
In Sean Quinn's case it was his exceptional greed. He was keenly aware of this character flaw, but instead saw it at as a positive.
He famously told an audience at the height of his power: "I suppose I was always very greedy. I was never happy with what we had, and I was always looking for new opportunities."
Greed served him well up to a point - fashioning a manufacturing giant from the very sand that lay beneath his family farm. It was tangible success with tangible products - you can't get more concrete than, well, concrete.
But as he sought those new opportunities his greed began to take him towards the intangible - insurance, shares, derivatives - where the seeds of his destruction were sown.
Debts
When he placed the biggest financial bet in Irish history - on the bank he then loved, Anglo Irish - he was already Ireland's richest man. Had his bet come good he would have placed himself between Roman Abramovich and the Duke of Westminster as the UK's third richest person with a fortune of £8bn or more.
But it didn't come good. It went bad. Very bad. And he turned to the bank he had bet on for help.
Either it lent him the money to pay his debts, or they were both going down together. He mortgaged his empire to the tune of 2.8bn euros.
It wasn't just the biggest financial bet in Irish history, it was the riskiest. That level of risk suggests a fundamental misunderstanding of the intangible Contracts for Difference that comprised the bet.
CFDs allow buyers to put a deposit down to gain control over shares - therefore with, say, 20% of the money they get all the increase in value on 100% of the shares should they go up. But if they go down, they suffer 100% of the loss.
And as more facts emerge about the history of under-provisioning and risk-taking at Quinn Insurance, it is hard not to conclude that Sean Quinn should have taken that most basic business advice to heart and stuck to what he knew.
A chain of events unfolded leading to the insurance business being taken from him by the regulator and ultimately the entire company as Anglo sought security over its debts.
Dramatic
But it's worth remembering that this didn't happen overnight. Sean Quinn was only deposed in April 2011 - years after the fateful bet. And it was during this period that the border tycoon displayed the another key element of Greek tragedy - hubris.
A senior businessman who knows Quinn told me that during the fraught negotiations with the bank that preceded his downfall, Sean Quinn confided in him.
This confidante was shocked by his attitude: "They'll never take it away from me. I'm too big for that", he reportedly said.
But Ireland had changed. It wasn't just regime change at the bank. It had been all change at the regulatory authorities and dramatic change in government too.
The rules of the business game in Ireland were not the same and Sean Quinn didn't see it. He over-negotiated on the terms of his exit and lost it all as a result.
Next, a combination of greed and anger propelled Sean Quinn to take the actions that ultimately led to the catastrophe he is experiencing today. His decision to sanction, support and add his signature to a plan to take half a billion euros worth of assets back from the bank that now owned them was his most ill-judged move to date.
The Quinn family argues that the "big case" regarding the legality of Anglo loans needs to be determined first before any action is taken to recover disputed assets.
But until a court says otherwise - and none has - those assets are only disputed in the minds of the Quinns and their supporters. Taking them now, and the income that flows from them, is illegal. And to do so on the basis of a future court decision finding in your favour is self-contradictory and absurd.
Emotions
So Sean Quinn goes to jail for contempt of court and could yet face more serious criminal charges that would keep him there for some time.
It is a truly tragic fall from power. There were distressing scenes in court as the former billionaire was taken away. Supporters and Sean Quinn crying real tears. But there is no sign of any awareness of how alien his actions appear to the vast majority of his fellow Irish citizens. Perhaps that will come.
And as for that wider population: does the imprisonment of the mighty Quinn and the faltering recovery of those international assets that now belong to the state-owned bank, bring catharsis, the healing and purging of emotions that the Greek writers would have liked?
That too, remains an unanswered question. This tragedy has a number of further acts to play out.
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Dozens of beach huts along the seafront in Hove have been broken into overnight, Sussex Police said. | The damage to 36 huts along the Kings Road Arches was discovered at about 04:30 GMT and locks were found on the nearby pitch and putt green.
Sussex Police said two boys were seen "shoulder charging" the beach hut doors between about 01:00 and 01:30.
Detectives are trying to trace a cyclist with a dog who was spotted on CCTV disturbing one of the boys.
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The Business Secretary, Sajid Javid, rolled back the years yesterday when he seemed to allow the possibility of the part nationalisation of the UK steel industry by saying the government was prepared to "co-invest" with potential buyers of Tata's remaining business. | Simon JackBusiness editor
Not since the 1970s has the government owned a slice of a manufacturing industry and it runs contrary to every instinct of a Conservative government for the state to meddle in the free market. Shadow Business Secretary Angel Eagle in the Commons today referred to it as "ideological reluctance".
So how likely is it?
The government's line is that it remains "very unlikely" and Sajid Javid was not in the mood to elaborate during a Commons debate which was more political than business-focused. He said it wouldn't be prudent for the government to declare its hand before a buyer was found.
There are many ways the government can support a troubled company or industry.
It can guarantee loans which allow borrowing at lower rates, it can give tax reliefs as it has for the North Sea operators, or it can lend directly as in the case of Greybull Capital for investment in Scunthorpe.
This last option, say the Department for Business Innovation and Skills, is the government's preferred method of co-investing. (Worth noting, these loans have to be on commercial terms to avoid breaching EU state aid rules).
Taking an ownership stake in the business is a last resort, as it means pumping in money which has no repayment schedule.
But there it is - on the table.
Once that option is there, why would any buyer not want a chunk of money it may never have to pay back? The government may say it's unlikely, but given the scale of the problems facing Port Talbot wouldn't it become a pre-requisite?
Not necessarily. Having the government as a part-owner can be a headache for those running the business. With taxpayer money at stake, every decision is, quite rightly, scrutinised intensely.
Meetings with government officials can eat up time and energy better spent focused on running the business. The price you pay for government money is government bureaucracy.
At this point you may be screaming - but what about the banks?
The government nationalised Northern Rock and spent billions on massive stakes in Lloyds and RBS. That is perfectly true but, whether we like it or not, banks are different.
If Tata abandons Port Talbot, there will be thousands of redundancies but - elsewhere in the UK economy - life will go on. Wages will be paid, mortgages will be provided and cash points will work. In the case of the banks those fundamental economic functions were gravely threatened.
The banks could not have survived without government support, but that does not mean they have enjoyed having it as a shareholder. If you asked Stephen Hester, the former chief executive of RBS, how he found being perceived as a sock puppet on the government's hand I suspect the answer would be not much.
Whether the government takes a stake or not is not the most important issue. Any stake would be a minority one, which means that other investors would have to be found. For that to happen, you need a credible business plan. At the moment Port Talbot has attracted the interest of Liberty House's Sanjeev Gupta whose plan has been formulated, in his own words, on the back of an envelope.
Port Talbot needs a lot more than that. Once there is a plan, we can figure out who owns what later.
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In 1963, Harold Wilson gave a speech at the Labour Party Conference, telling his audience that if the country was to prosper, a "new Britain" would need to be forged in the "white heat" of a scientific revolution. | By Pallab GhoshScience correspondent, BBC News
It was one of the most memorable speeches in British politics.
With Theresa May now pledging, at the CBI conference, a big increase in funding for scientific research and development, is this another "white heat of technology" moment?
The scientific community is one of the main beneficiaries of the UK's membership of the EU, and stands to lose out in a post-Brexit world.
Britain receives £850m in research funds from the EU each year. Full membership of one of the main EU funding programmes requires free movement of labour. British universities employ 30,000 scientists with EU citizenship.
There have already been reports of UK scientists losing out in EU grant applications and of EU citizens not taking up posts in UK universities because of the uncertainty around funding and the residency status of EU citizens following the referendum result in June.
If Theresa May's CBI announcement of £2bn for research is truly new money and depending on the strings attached - this intervention could go a long way to cancelling out any potential financial cost of Brexit. It would not on its own, however, make up for the possible loss of collaborations with EU scientists following Brexit.
Within days of becoming Prime Minister, Mrs May wrote to senior scientists to say that she wanted to ensure a positive outcome for science in negotiations to leave the European Union.
A few weeks later, the Chancellor, Phillip Hammond, said that the government would underwrite EU research funds obtained before the UK leaves the EU.
So there is not much more the government could have done to reassure the scientific community in the early days following the referendum result.
Greatest strengths
Now, research leaders want the warm words of the summer turned into firm commitments as the autumn chill of an uncertain future sets in. On the face of it they seem to have precisely that.
The President of the Royal Society, Venki Ramakrishnan, cautiously welcomed the government's announcement of the additional money for research.
He said: "Science and innovation are among the UK's greatest strengths and are key to our future. By placing them at the heart of our industrial strategy the prime minister is setting out a progressive vision for a country where the fruits of knowledge can spur economic growth and improve people's lives. We look forward to seeing further details of the government's plans."
But the scientific community's concern is not just about the money. Free movement of labour enables UK institutions to attract the best scientists from Europe. And the EU research funding system - which requires full members to allow free movement - enables collaborations with researchers from some of the leading labs in Europe.
The prime minster said on Monday that she was committed to attracting the brightest and best researchers to the UK, but this could not be done without reducing overall numbers of people migrating to the UK - an indication that she may be willing to allow some form of free movement of scientific labour or possibly a simplified visa system for researchers.
UK research is among the best in the world. Without the free movement of European scientists, the concern is that this great national resource, which enriches the country and benefits the economy, will slowly be diminished just as other nations are boosting their research efforts.
At a recent meeting of the Foundation for Science and Technology at the Royal Society, senior scientific leaders were advised against complaining too much.
The former science minister, Lord Willetts, was not quite that blunt as he tactfully told them that unless they were seen to adopt a more constructive approach they would be in danger of being regarded as a privileged elite, putting their own self-serving interest ahead of the wishes of many people in the country.
Smart lobbying
He gently urged them to be as smart with their lobbying as they are with their research and to play the government's game. As a first step, he said, the science community should make every effort to set up new collaborations with research groups outside Europe.
One of the government's top political priorities is to demonstrate that the country can thrive post-Brexit, so there is plenty of money and enthusiasm from ministers for projects with institutions in the US, China and Commonwealth countries.
Lord Willetts suggested that if researchers try their best to seize the new opportunities Brexit presents, two things might happen. First, they might be pleasantly surprised and get to be involved in some really good, well-funded science. Second, according to the wily Lord Willetts, they would receive a more sympathetic hearing from government for the concessions they are seeking over Brexit.
Chief among these is an exemption for researchers from restrictions on free movement - both from the EU and from other parts of the world. If the research leaders cannot get free movement for scientists then they will seek a simpler, faster and less bureaucratic visa system for them. And the university sector wants to take student numbers out of the immigration figures - because if foreign student numbers are cut, British universities receive less money.
But any relaxation on immigration would be at odds with the government's stated aim of reducing numbers.
One chink of hope for many in the scientific community is that the government's much heralded industrial strategy might come to their rescue. No-one knows quite what the strategy is - so at the moment it is whatever anyone wants it to be.
Scientific leaders want it to be something that provides the political cover for government to be more flexible on immigration and a means by which they can get a huge cash injection.
A vibrant research base, they are telling ministers, could be the engine to the high-tech, high-skills economy that Mrs May has said she wants post-Brexit Britain to be. It would also present the optimistic narrative the government is seeking.
More money
So emboldened by the possibility of research being at the heart of the industrial strategy, four of the UK's national science academies and the Campaign for Science and Engineering (Case) have called for the government and UK industry to make up for the possible loss of EU funding.
They also asked them to nearly double the amount of public and private money spent on research. The academies and Case want an increase from the current 1.7% of GDP to 3% by 2025. This would bring British R&D spending in line with Germany and increase the UK's annual combined public and private research spending from around £30.6bn to £52bn.
Such a boost in funding would be transformative, according to Naomi Weir of Case.
"It would boost confidence for inward investment, drive growth in the economy, see the creation of high-quality jobs and increase our capacity to tackle national and global challenges in health, energy and the environment," she said.
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St Pauls Carnival in Bristol was founded almost 50 years ago to bring people together, but has been cancelled this year due to "ongoing challenges" faced by organisers. Here is a look back at its history. | The carnival started life as the St Pauls Festival in the 1960s.
Early immigrants from the Caribbean had settled in the St Pauls area of Bristol and were "unhappy with how they were perceived and treated by Bristol at large", according to the carnival's website.
The community had previously organised the Bristol Bus Boycott, in 1963, which overturned a ban on ethnic minorities working on Bristol's buses and is regarded as a milestone in achieving equality.
The community created the St Pauls Festival not only to gather and enjoy themselves, but also for other people to learn more about their culture.
There is disagreement over when the first festival was held, but Roy Hackett, one of the founders, said in an interview that the first one was in 1968.
"At the very beginning we just wanted to do something to say thank you to our community, which at that time was St Pauls," he said.
"If somebody had come up with another idea like cutting the hedges, cleaning snow from doorways or doing the groceries we may have done that instead, but we came up with this and I thought it was a good idea because everybody could have a part in it."
Similar festivals were created around the country at the same time, including Notting Hill Carnival in London.
Mr Hackett said there were only two floats at the first St Pauls Festival and it attracted between three and four thousand people, as "we were just testing it".
The festival grew and is one of the biggest of its kind in Europe. Tens of thousands of people attended last year.
It became known as St Pauls Carnival, and most recently St Pauls Afrikan Caribbean Carnival.
Writing on the Bristol Culture website, Aisling Mustan said the carnival "has offered musical inspiration for hundreds of local acts" throughout the years.
Carnival acts have included The Wild Bunch, a sound system and collective of musicians and DJs which included Tricky and members of Massive Attack.
In the interview from 2012, Mr Hackett commented on organisational problems that have caused the the carnival to be cancelled in recent years, including in 2002 and 2006.
"It is designed to bring people together and it did in the days we did it," he said.
"As the event approaches there is always a discussion whether they can afford to put it on. Sometimes it just scrapes through."
Although there will be no large-scale carnival event this year, the organisers said there would be a community showcase on 5 September.
"The organisation is working hard with funders and supporters to make sure we can deliver a successful Afrikan Caribbean Carnival in Bristol for many years to come," a statement said.
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A warning from DUP minister Diane Dodds that Northern Ireland's economy is in a "perilous situation" and would be destroyed by another coronavirus lockdown features on the front page of the News Letter on Thursday. | Mrs Dodds' comments at Stormont's scrutiny committee led to Sinn Féin MLA John O'Dowd asking whether the minister was challenging the public messaging from her party leader, the NI First Minister Arlene Foster.
"Even the fear alone of another lockdown would remove any lingering hopes businesses have of economic recovery," Mrs Dodds said.
"This is costing jobs and impacting on families."
The Irish News front page focuses on the message from NI Chief Medical Officer Dr Michael McBride who has called for a "six month commitment" from the public as Health Minister Robin Swann said coronavirus is "gaining momentum" again in Northern Ireland.
"I ask for six months more commitment from you, as if your life depends on it - because your life and the lives of others does depend on it," Dr McBride said.
Meanwhile, the Belfast Telegraph reveals on its front page that 10 staff at Craigavon Ambulance Station have tested positive for coronavirus after attending "a social event outside of work".
A further six workers have also been advised to self-isolate.
"The situation is being managed in line with Public Health Guidance and NIAS procedures," a Northern Ireland Ambulance Service (NIAS) statement said.
Elsewhere, a number of the newspapers, including the Belfast Telegraph and the News Letter, report that sex offence convictions against 15 people are to be set aside because of "legislative error".
The cases involve 17 victims, the majority of whom were children at the time the offences occurred.
The Public Prosecution Service has discovered "a technical change in the law" in 2009 meant the cases should not have been prosecuted in a magistrates court.
It said it is "truly sorry" for the distress the news will cause victims.
The Irish News says grammar schools that suspended "11-plus style exams" this year could potentially be forced to reverse their decisions.
It reports that a dozen schools, most of them Catholic grammars, cancelled entrance assessments due to take place later this year.
The newspaper says it has now emerged the schools may be required to go through an "onerous development proposal process before any change can be made".
Finally, in these difficult times, it is always useful to get advice from an elderly couple who have stuck together through thick and thin.
Joseph Graham, 102, and wife Nellie, 101, from Randalstown, County Antrim, were married during World War Two and are celebrating 78 years together.
They first met 96 years ago at Taylorstown Elementary School.
Their great grand-daughter Joanne Graham told the News Letter that Joseph has let her in on the secret to wedded bliss.
"Grandad says you just have to agree and say nothing, that's how it has lasted so long," she adds.
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A man has been arrested on suspicion of causing death by dangerous driving after a mother-of-three was killed in a suspected hit-and-run crash. | Noreen Akhtar, 38, from Banbury, died in hospital after being struck by a vehicle outside Cravings Café in Stratford Road, Birmingham, on 16 June.
A 33-year-old man, from Moseley, was held after the car believed to be involved was found at an address in Birmingham, said West Midlands Police.
He has been released on police bail.
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The recession means that Welsh companies have to be ever more inventive and determined due to difficult world trade conditions.
According to the latest figures, the value of exports for Wales for the four quarters up to and including the first quarter of 2013 fell by £1,235 m compared with the previous four quarters.
But the Welsh government says the long-term trend in Wales is positive with exports increasing by 97.8% since 1999.
Four Welsh exporters explain how they have managed in the downturn.
| Concrete Canvas
The company based at Treforest, Pontypridd, produces a unique fabric shelter which when sprayed with water turns to concrete in just hours and is selling it to over 40 countries worldwide with exports making up 85% of its sales.
The canvas is used mainly in civil infrastructure and mining applications.
Last year the firm, which employs 20 people, won a £1.2m deal to Chile, to supply the material to a gold mine 4,000 metres high in the Andes where it was used to line water channels carrying off the glacial melt.
But there are more artistic uses - the canvas was exported to Iceland and used in a set design for Ridley Scott's film Prometheus.
Director Peter Brewin explained how they have multiplied exports since launching in 2008.
"Because our product is unique and has generated so much international interest we receive regular enquiries from companies wished to represent Concrete Canvas from all over the world," he said.
"Additionally, we regularly attend trade shows internationally to meet new distributors for markets that are particularly promising.
"Once we have an in-country distributor we support them heavily with training, technical support, marketing material and by participating with them at trade shows.
"We also facilitate transfer of knowledge and project case studies internationally between our distributors."
He said they had received Welsh government support including funding which helped them take part in trade missions to Japan and Australia, as well as advice and guidance on entering new markets like Brazil and Russia.
Mr Brewin said the company had maintained 100% turnover growth year-on-year since its launch and expected to maintain a comparable growth rate in the future.
"Consequently, we anticipate our exports increasing dramatically both in magnitude and as a proportion of overall turnover," he added.
"For all companies who add value in the UK and export overseas the recent decrease in the value of the pound relative to many currencies has helped to offset comparatively high labour, tax and regulatory costs.
"All of Concrete Canvas Ltd's tier one suppliers are UK-based, allowing us to add significant value within the UK throughout our supply chain.
"A fall in the pound adds significantly to our cost advantage compared to the cost of locally sourced concrete in many export markets.
"However, in most markets Concrete Canvas is sold based on its technical superiority as well as its cost advantages."
Tomos Watkin beers
Eleven years ago the Tomos Watkins Swansea brewery was in liquidation, but then Connie and her brother Phil Parry stepped in to buy it, turning it into a success story.
The company now employs 69 and has an annual turnover of about £10m, and according to chief executive Ms Parry, the beer is one of the fastest growing brands in Wales.
"We put all of our heart and soul into reinvesting in plant and equipment and staff training," she said.
"There is a uniquely Welsh quality to their products. From the names of the ales - Cwrw Idris , Cwrw Haf, Cwrw Braf - to the labels.
"Our Cwrw Braf for instance depicts a daffodil - our national flower.
"And our Magic Lager which was voted the best beer in Wales by Tesco."
Exports are a growing area and earlier this year, after taking part in a trade mission to China, the company shipped its first consignment of the hand-brewed beverage to Shanghai.
Now they have clinched a second order, double the size of their first.
"The first order was for a 20ft container. And this one if for a 40ft container," explained Ms Parry.
They also export to the United States, Hong Kong, and Spain but are concentrating on Australia and China, she said.
The firm first broke into the export market when they were invited to New York to take part in a Welsh Week.
"We will continue to explore new markets by taking advantage of the trade missions that are organised and subsidised by the Welsh government," said Ms Parry.
"We do see our exports increasing. At the moment they are a relatively small part of our turnover."
Ms Parry added that exchange rates are a factor for their American importer as they are paid for goods in sterling as opposed to dollars.
She added: "Our most surprising event has been the amount of companies that have contacted us for an order. We did win the World Beer Championship in Chicago.
"And we are consistently recognised in the brewing industry as one the forerunners of quality and excellence. So I think that this is major contributing factor."
Melin Tregwynt
Pembrokeshire-based Melin Tregwynt's distinctive Welsh woollen blankets have become increasingly visible in stores in the UK.
But company partner Eifion Griffiths said while home sales continue to do well, exports have fallen from about 30% of total turnover in 1997/98.
Mr Griffiths said the fall had been partly driven by the increasing value of the pound and fell to its lowest level during the financial problems of 2008.
After sales in the US and Europe declined, the company started to investigate Japan and found they were not so price-sensitive and more interested in the authenticity and story behind the blankets.
Mr Griffiths said: "This gave us an opportunity to begin to rebuild our exports.
"Recently despite the volatile exchange rate we have found exports increasing both in Europe and the US as well as Japan.
"We have begun to show in these markets again in the last few years. In addition, there are new opportunities in counties like China, Korea and Singapore."
He said exports are currently 10% of turnover which sounds like a big decrease but in fact turnover has more than doubled since the 1990s.
He also praised the help they have had to support their international export campaign from the Welsh government, but said one of the problems with the support mechanism is that it appeared to "be too driven by short-term political goals".
Mr Griffiths said: "The assembly strategy changes too often and this can confuse our overseas partners. We need to provide at national level, a consistent, well-thought through policy with a brand that develops but doesn't keep changing every year."
The unique Welsh flavour of the product was not something the emphasised in the beginning, Mr Griffiths said, because they felt that might limit its appeal.
But as times changed, they found that Welshness was a driver for their sales.
Selling Melin Tregwynt products to Japanese company Muji and having their directors visit the west Wales mill to see production was a surprise, Mr Griffiths added, as was working with Birkenstock providing fabric to be made into shoes.
Hajj Safe
Kamal Ali came up with the idea of manufacturing safety bags for the millions of pilgrims going on the Islamic pilgrimage of the annual haj and umrah after he gave up his design and technology teaching job and moved home to Newport, south Wales.
That was four years ago, swiftly followed by the setting up of the company two years ago.
It sells secure waist bags and other bags for Muslims who are making the pilgrimage to Mecca. It also works to supply airline kits with anti bacterial hand wash that does not contain alcohol.
The bags are manufactured in China where costs are cheaper and shipped back to the UK.
Hajj Safe currently exports about £15,000 to £20,000 of products a year, mainly to Europe, the US and Nigeria which Mr Ali says is a really big market with 100,000 haj pilgrims, to Indonesia and Australia.
"We would like to break into the Middle East, India and Pakistan markets," said Mr Ali, who has just returned from a trip to Morocco. "That would be brilliant news for us."
Most of the sales are direct to shops in the UK where transactions can be completed quickly but Mr Ali said he has secured a deal with a major luggage company which gives them access to all the UK's airports.
Mr Ali said while the firm is currently small he hoped to employ Welsh designers.
"I spent my childhood here and graduated from Newport university in fashion design," he said. " And I would like to help bring jobs into the area where I grew up."
Mr Ali said they had secure a good manufacturer in China for their products, but the costs of importing them were affected by exchange rates.
Initially, he said it had been a massive risk "giving £15,000 to this company in China and we hadn't seen a single product."
His biggest business surprise had been about working with wholesalers, who were taking about 60% of the recommended retail price of his goods.
"In two years' time I would like to be settled with 10 or more employees firmly situated in lots of markets in Europe," he added. "I would like to be a really known brand in the industry."
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VE Day is an event clouded in mythology. Allan Little looks at what really happened that day, in Britain and throughout Europe, using the BBC archive. | By Allan LittleBBC News
On the afternoon of 8 May 1945, BBC war correspondent Wynford Vaughan-Thomas stood in the town square of the medieval city of Luneburg in north-western Germany. RAF aircraft flew. A white sheet of surrender hung from one of the windows of the old town hall.
"The leading citizens of Luneburg are standing waiting," Vaughan-Thomas reported, "and behind them are Bren gun carriers and lorries passing in a steady stream.
"And there's an endless line of German soldiers, the disbanded wreckage of the German army. But no-one even bothers to notice them any more. They tramp by to the nearest prison camp and even the citizens of Luneburg don't lift their heads to notice them.
"The war for them is over," said Vaughan-Thomas.
A British army spokesman addressed the crowd.
"People of Luneburg, the Nazi government and the German Wehrmacht have surrendered unconditionally to the Allied Expeditionary Forces," he said, and his voice, amplified by a PA system, carried across the square and into Vaughan-Thomas's microphone and, through radio, into homes across the United Kingdom and much of the British Empire.
"This unconditional surrender was signed on behalf of the German High Command by Field Marshall Jodl.
"Europe has been brought to famine and misery by the Germans. The German nation must not expect to fare better than the nations they have overrun."
In the nearby city of Kassel, Vaughan-Thomas's colleague Frank Gillard stood in the wreckage. Much of the city had been reduced to rubble in a battle a month earlier.
Gillard was witnessing the start of what would soon become the greatest population upheaval in European history - the migration of millions of people displaced by the war.
"Most of those who are on the streets today are displaced persons, Belgians and French people going westwards, Russians and Poles going east.
"And here, right before me now, comes a handcart, loaded up with a big wooden box, a couple of suitcases, and one or two sacks stuffed with I suppose clothing of some sort, and it's being pulled by two sturdy-looking women who are tramping out - I suppose they're French or Belgians, they are tramping out in a westerly direction through Kassel. And just behind them there comes an old man pushing a bicycle, also loaded up with all the kit you could imagine, about as much as a bicycle could possibly hold, he's going home as well, perhaps to France or to Belgium…
"The war in Europe is over and here in Kassel, as in many German cities, there's nothing but the grey ruins to mark its passing."
Those two eyewitness dispatches survive in a remarkably vivid BBC radio archive. What was then the BBC Home Service was on the air throughout the day, carrying live and recorded reports of scenes of desolation from across Europe - and of jubilation on the streets of Britain.
VE Day at 75: Find out more
It had begun the previous day. A typewritten script of the 18:00 radio news bulletin survives, with the newsreader's handwritten amendments and crossings-out.
"No statement has been made about the prime minister's VE Day broadcast," the script reads.
"But unconfirmed reports from correspondents say that the unconditional surrender of Germany to the Western Allies and Russia was signed in the early hours of this morning. They say the ceremony took place in the schoolhouse at Rheims which General Eisenhower uses for his headquarters."
What the correspondents did not yet reveal was that the Germans had petitioned the Western Allies for a separate peace in the west, leaving German forces free to carry on the war against the Soviet Union in the east. The Allied commander, General Eisenhower flatly refused; on 6 May, he had told the Germans that unless they surrendered unconditionally on all fronts, that Allied air raids would resume.
For Germany, General Alfred Jodl signed the surrender document at 02:41.
The war in Europe was over.
On the morning on 8 May, the BBC's 08:00 news bulletin began with the words: "Here is the eight o'clock news for today, Tuesday May the 8th; the Day of Victory in Europe."
The same bulletin reported that the Eastern German city of Breslau had fallen to the Soviet Red Army after 12 weeks of heavy fighting, that King Leopold of the Belgians and his wife, held as prisoners in Austria, had been freed by American troops, and that, in the war against Japan, American, Australian and Dutch forces had made further gains.
All morning the BBC brought news from across Europe, often from places that had been liberated only hours earlier.
The correspondent in Amsterdam, Robert Dunnett, reported seeing collaborators being rounded up and paraded through the streets where the crowds booed them.
"Whenever they [Dutch citizens] see an Allied soldier, they cheer and lift him right up into the air," he reported, and recorded a crowd singing, It's a Long Way to Tipperary.
"I was," he added, "carried myself about 50 yards by a strong and healthy young Dutchman!"
Denis Johnston arrived at Hitler's Bavarian retreat at Berchtesgaden. In his dispatch, he seems subdued. He had been reporting on the war for three years and is audibly struggling to grasp that it is, in Europe at least, over at last.
"It's rather hard to know what to say," he says.
"There have been so many false dawns. We are quite unprepared.
"Hitler's villa has been done over by the SS. They didn't want it taken by us so they've burned it out. Here around me the trees are shattered by bombs... This scarred and blackened villa behind me with its empty flagpole seems to be a very elegant comment on the whole situation."
In an evocative dispatch from a country road outside Emsdorp in Austria, the British public heard the voices of German soldiers, exhausted and humiliated, being questioned by US servicemen. BBC correspondent Robert Reid watched tens of thousands of defeated men, many of them "stretched out dead beat" on the bonnets of their vehicles, being sent into a field that was being used as a "temporary cage".
Maj James L Sumter, of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, told Reid the men were "mostly stragglers" - including the 12th SS Hitler Youth Division - trying to flee from advancing Soviet forces further east.
"We've had no trouble with any of them," the Major says. "They have no guilt in their feeling at all. They just seem to be happy to get away from the Russians."
In London, crowds had been gathering since early morning. At noon, the bells of St Paul's Cathedral - itself a symbol of defiance having survived the Blitz as buildings all around it had been engulfed in flames - rang out across the capital.
At 15:00, Winston Churchill addressed the nation from 10 Downing Street. He recalled the dark early days of the war.
"After gallant France had been struck down [in May 1940]", he said, "we from this island and from our united Empire maintained the struggle single-handed for a whole year until we were joined by the military might of Soviet Russia and, later, by the overwhelming power and resources of the United States of America.
"Our gratitude to all our splendid allies goes forth from all our hearts in this island and throughout the British Empire.
"We may allow ourselves a brief period of rejoicing."
And rejoice they did. Crowds gathered outside Buckingham Palace where they listened in silence as Churchill's speech was relayed on loudspeakers.
BBC reporter Howard Marshall was among the crowds. "The entire space, the whole scene is one dense mass of people in the gayest colours: red, white and blue rosettes, red, white and blue hats, streamers, flags. The Queen Victoria Memorial is covered with people - a land girl sitting on the bronze lions, a Wren sitting up behind her, flags everywhere."
He saw a South African flag carried to the front of the crowd, and soldiers and airmen from Canada, New Zealand and the United States join festivities. There were visible reminders of the years of conflict that had just ended: the broken columns where a German bomb had struck Buckingham Palace during the Blitz.
"Still," he added, "the feeling is one of thanksgiving rather than of celebration, a quiet and deep joyousness."
Joy Hunter worked as a typist at 10 Downing Street and in the underground bunker beneath Whitehall known as the Cabinet War Rooms. She was among the crowd at Buckingham Palace.
"We were right by the gates. Churchill came out. There was tremendous cheering and shouting and noise. Then we went back down the Mall to Trafalgar Square and there we saw them all dancing, doing the conger eel, going round everything. It was just hysteria really. Probably people didn't know quite how to behave. It had been so tight - and now it was over."
Did the public understand, on that day, how profoundly Britain and the wider world had been changed by the war; that there would be no going back to the old normal of the 1930s?
This had been total war: the state had assumed sweeping new powers to mobilise the whole country for the war effort. Many of those powers would now survive into peacetime.
The government took much of the economy into state ownership: the railways, the coal mines, iron and steel.
A new welfare state and a National Health Service would bring state provision into every home in the country.
For war had created a new public mood that would change the relationship between the state and society for a generation.
"To a remarkable degree, this includes people who think they'll be worse off under this new settlement," says historian Dan Todman, author of Britain's War: A New World, 1942-47.
"Quite a large proportion of middle-class people who weren't going to benefit necessarily from it said that they still thought it was a good idea; that it was something that ought to be done for other people.
"So I think that's part of that wartime mood: the recognition that the nation-state owes something to everybody, especially the least fortunate members of society."
Churchill's reference to the "overwhelming power and resources of the United States of America" pointed the way to the new world that would open up from now on - leadership of the Western world had crossed the Atlantic. The United States did not, as it had done in 1918, retreat to its tradition of isolation.
Britain had not stood entirely alone in 1940: it had had its Empire. How many of those rejoicing on the streets of London could have foreseen that that Empire would soon cease to exist? Britain was no longer the pre-eminent global power. By 1960, the USA would account for nearly half the wealth of the entire globe. The post-war world would be shaped by that new American-led reality.
On the streets of London, Churchill's speech was the signal for the revelry to begin in earnest.
At 15:20, broadcaster Richard Dimbleby was among the crowd in Whitehall when something unexpected happened.
"It's been an amazing moment," he said, "and one that we didn't know was going to happen."
Churchill had emerged from Downing Street standing upright in an open-topped car, holding on to the windscreen and, according to Dimbleby, trying to make his way to the House of Commons where he was due to address Parliament.
"But with the crowd so tightly packed, so enormous and so enthusiastic, he could not get through," said Dimbleby.
"As he moved, the crowd grew tighter and tighter and the cheering louder... It looked as though they might lift the whole vehicle off the ground in their enthusiasm."
In his 15:00 broadcast Churchill had concluded by reminding the country that Imperial Japan was still undefeated and that Allied forces were still fighting in the East. That warning was echoed in one of the most poignant and arresting moments of the entire day's broadcasting.
A correspondent in Edinburgh had described the scenes there, with citizens dancing eightsome reels in the shadow of Edinburgh Castle. Then he crossed to Glasgow, and to a voice he introduced only as Mrs MacDonald. Seventy-five years on, the voice is striking for its quiet, anguished dignity, which stands in stark contrast to the unrestrained joy of the street parties.
Her youngest son was only seven, she said, but she had four other boys who'd all enlisted.
"And it's one of them, Roy, that I'm thinking of especially. He was in his second year, learning to be a doctor, at the Glasgow University in 1939. He volunteered for the Black Watch and then got a commission in the HLI [Highland Light Infantry].
"Roy was killed in Italy.
"Another of my sons had been discharged from the Scots Guards with the loss of one of his legs.
"I can't forget that the war is only half done. I have another son in the Air Force in South East Asia Command. And my second youngest has just got into the Fleet Air Arm.
"On this day of victory I pray that soon the war in the East will be over too, so that, with your sons, they will return home before long.
"Until then, God keep them, wherever they may be."
Churchill had also used his broadcast to remind the country that the only part of Britain that had been occupied by Nazi Germany was what he called "our dear Channel Islands". Seventy thousand British people had lived under occupation there since 1940 and although France had been liberated in 1944, the Channel Islands had remained under German occupation until VE Day.
The BBC now crossed to those islands and introduced a voice identified on air only as "a woman of the Channel Islands".
"This last year has been the most terrible of all," she said. "We hoped that D-Day [6 June, 1944] would bring some relief. But since then there has been a terrible winter with no light or heat or food.
"My own anxiety was relieved only a week ago when I had a short message from my family to say that they were alive and well. But thousands of us haven't even had that.
"So this is the first day of real hope - for us a day not of rejoicing but of deep relief and thankfulness that after all our sufferings we are free, and under our own flag again."
By late afternoon, news was coming in from the United States, where President Harry S Truman had made a broadcast at the same time as Churchill's in London.
A correspondent in New York reported that Times Square was now a "milling crowd of delirious people... and from the windows of the skyscrapers high above us great showers of paper and coloured streamers are floating down - an absolute blizzard of paper".
In Cincinnati, the crowds gathered and some began to fire their weapons into the air. An effigy of Hitler was suspended from a lamp post. And in San Francisco, a young reporter called Alistair Cooke - who would go on to enthral listeners with his longstanding weekly Letter From America - described a much more subdued atmosphere.
"San Francisco is certainly relieved that it doesn't have to go on looking over its shoulder at the deaths of its boys in Europe. But it faces west, as the thousands of sailors here well know. Last night, two Marines threatened to bust the nose of a man who said, 'Well, so the war's over'.
"The docks are being got ready not for any celebration but for the few million men fresh from Europe who will pass through here to the still unfinished Battle of the Pacific."
But by evening, in London, the rejoicing was unrestrained. The listening public heard a raucous rendition of Knees Up Mother Brown in an East End pub.
In an unscheduled appearance, Winston Churchill appeared again on the balcony of the Ministry of Health in Whitehall, dressed in a boiler suit.
The speech was not broadcast but Richard Dimbleby was in the crowd and reported what he saw and heard.
"We were the first, in this ancient island, to draw the sword against tyranny. And after a while we were left alone," Churchill said.
"There we stood, alone. Did anyone want to give in?"
"No!" the crowd roared back.
"Were we downhearted?"
"No!" they answered.
Churchill would later say that history would be kind to him because he intended to write it. He began at that moment, on the balcony of the Ministry of Health, to articulate a sense of what Britain had done and what it had stood for in the war years that the country still acknowledges and celebrates 75 years on.
"We came back after long months from the jaws of death, out of the mouth of hell, when all the world wondered - when shall the reputation and faith of this generation of English men and women fail?
"I say that in the long years to come, not only will the people of this island but of the world, wherever the bird of freedom chirps in human hearts, look back to what we've done and they will say, 'Do not despair, do not yield to violence and tyranny, march straightforward and die if need be, unconquered'."
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The port of Mariupol in eastern Ukraine has become a symbol in recent months of the country's economic struggles. A recent partial blockade by Russian naval vessels of the nearby Kerch Strait means that fewer ships are now docking at the harbour. | By Ed ButlerBusiness Daily presenter, Ukraine
The port has lost 33% of its fleet and up to 140,000 tonnes of exported metal products a month since Russia's construction of a bridge across the Kerch Strait in May 2018, and restrictions on the size of ships that can pass underneath.
Cargo vessels are being delayed by up to a week, and the cranes on the dock stand idle. Larger international shipping firms have simply stopped coming.
Thousands of jobs depend on the work here - Mariupol is one of Ukraine's largest ports - and many tens of thousands more depend on the export of goods it allows.
"Big business feels it and we all feel it too because prices are rising," says Galina Balobanova, a local businesswoman.
"A lot of people work in the port and they're not being laid off, but for them it's an unexpected vacation. We need this trade and for the blockade to be lifted."
Yet it's not just the relationship with Russia that is the problem for firms in Mariupol.
Another businessman, who doesn't want to be named, meets me in a local bar and puts it bluntly: "The Russians are a big problem - but the corruption here is the single biggest thing strangling our trade."
Money for much-needed dredging of the harbour has simply gone missing, he tells me, presumed stolen by officials, and this has placed big limits on the types of ships reaching the dock.
The way that corruption impedes business in Ukraine is varied and has been widely studied. In the past ordinary citizens would often have to pay a bribe just for simple procedures such as a visit to a doctor, obtaining a passport or driving licence.
Much of this has now improved, though, thanks to a system called PreZorro that bypasses human officials and allows digital processing of applications and tenders.
"The last five years the pace of reforms is amazing," says Olesia Verchenko, academic director at the Kyiv School of Economics.
"If you look at the price of drugs, for example, in hospitals you sometimes have a tenfold decrease in the health ministry's costs [as a result of the reforms]."
These changes mean that regular small and medium-sized businesses in Ukraine may not see corruption firsthand. But experts say it is still a problem at the highest level, in the courts and among the political class.
"They stole money from our army, they stole the lives of our soldiers," says Vyacheslav, a protester I meet at a noisy demonstration in Independence Square in Kiev.
The charges he refers to are recently revealed documents implicating senior members of Petro Poroshenko's government in a defence procurement scam worth some $10m (£8m).
Smuggled Russian munitions and other weaponry were allegedly sold to the Ukrainian military at wildly inflated prices. The two senior officials have been suspended by the president pending an investigation.
"They were so confident they wouldn't get caught, they filtered the money through their own companies," says Sergey Leshchenko, an MP and former investigative journalist.
President Poroshenko has not been directly accused of any wrongdoing himself. But one of those firms was one formally owned by the president. "It's impossible he couldn't have known," Mr Leshchenko adds.
The IMF has made accountability and transparency a condition of recent bailouts in Ukraine, but even it admits that those accused of corrupt practices are rarely seriously punished.
In what's been seen as a backwards step, just two days after the defence scandal broke, the constitutional court ruled that those accused of corruption no longer have to provide evidence in court on how they came by their wealth.
For Mr Leshchenko this scandal has been the last straw. He has withdrawn his support for President Poroshenko and is not backing any of the other established parliamentary candidates in this month's presidential election either, saying the entire political elite is compromised.
"Fixing corruption in this country is Ukraine's number one problem, it has to be stopped," he says.
"It's in the interests of Europe and the whole world and that's why I urge friends abroad not to back Ukraine's corrupt leadership but to protect anti-corruption institutions - and free and fair elections."
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Police have named a man they are searching for after the death of a woman in Essex. | The murder inquiry was prompted by the discovery of a woman's body in a building on Old Road, Clacton.
Officers want to question Scott Hilling, 25, who has a cross tattoo on his left hand and the word "Hillen" on his neck.
Police have requested CCTV footage from businesses and residential properties in the area.
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An Olympic-sized swimming pool for Aberdeen has taken a step closer after a planning application was lodged with the city council. | Under the proposals, the former Linksfield Academy would be demolished to make way for the 50m pool and a separate diving pool.
It is adjacent to the new Sports Village.
The application from the council, Sportscotland and University of Aberdeen, could see eight or 10 lanes.
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The parties and bunting of VE Day marked the end of hostilities, but World War Two was still affecting hundreds of thousands of former enemy soldiers - and those who lived near them - in camps across the UK. | By Greig WatsonBBC News
While Hitler's plans for invasion in 1940 were defeated, an army of German and Italian troops did occupy parts of Britain.
Held in camps across the country, they were put to work - and even after the end of the war, many stayed on and made friends, fell in love and integrated into British life.
Giovanni Bredariol was 21 and serving with the Italian navy when captured at Tobruk in Libya. Sent to a camp near Loughborough in Leicestershire, he volunteered to cook for the British guards.
"These officers very likely came to enjoy pasta and pizzas long before they became such a popular part of the English diet," noted his daughter, Dorina Voyle.
"He returned with [his wife] to England to settle in 1948, worked on a farm in Wigston, and then became a builder."
Salvatore Zuncheddu, also 21, worked on farms in Somerset after being captured in North Africa.
He made a good impression on one owner, Ted Moxey, who when the war ended, asked him if he would come back and work for him.
Mr Zuncheddu went to Italy to get his wife and returned to England.
"'Nan Moxey' taught my mother to speak English," remembered his daughter Linda Hocking.
"She was welcomed into the family and treated like a daughter. My father took work on the local farm and became "one of the boys"."
He joined in the local community life, including joining the Burtle Silver Band playing the trumpet.
Thousands of Italian prisoners started to arrive in Britain after victories in 1941.
Due to manpower shortages, the demand for their work, especially on farms, was huge and thousands were shipped in and put up in various places.
Robin Quinn, author of Hitler's Last Army: German POWs in Britain, said: "It was very makeshift. All sorts of buildings were used as accommodation, from stately homes to old mills.
"When the Red Cross asked to know how many camps there were, the government responded they had no idea."
Eventually there were more than 130 purpose-built camps, with many other buildings pressed into service, and soon it felt like there was one on the outskirts of almost every town.
Seen as "docile", the Italian soldiers quickly became part of the wartime landscape with a total of about 150,000 eventually arriving.
The German prisoners, however, were for a long time regarded as more dangerous and the hardened Nazis were identified and sent to camps in the US, Canada or Scotland.
By March 1945, 70,000 Germans were working in Britain but their numbers peaked after VE Day, when approximately 140,000 were sent from the US.
At first they were given the toughest farm work, like cropping sugar beet, while many others were sent to London to help with building work for the 1948 Olympics.
Mr Quinn said: "The country was still desperately short of manpower and transport. Britain was in no hurry to send them back."
The peak number of German prisoners reached 402,200 in September 1946. At Christmas the same year, they were given permission to visit British homes.
Hans Behrens, who was still a teenager at the time, was invited for Christmas dinner by a family in Burgess Hill, Sussex, with whom he became firm friends.
"To this day I call them 'my English parents'," he later said.
"I thought about going back to Germany all the time. I wanted to go home, but the more I got to know England the less I wanted to go back.
"By the time I moved in with my English parents the draw of home became less."
He eventually settled and set up a firm importing German electronics into Britain.
Many of the 25,000 Germans who elected to stay in Britain did so after finding wives and girlfriends.
Gary Paterson said his wife's grandfather, Berthold Beer, was sent to work on a farm near Rugeley, Staffordshire, where he met his future wife, Peggy.
"He wasn't allowed to take her to the cinema so it was just fleeting moments until Peggy got a job working on the same farm.
"They got married in 1948 but there was so little housing, they and some others moved back into a then disused prison camp to live."
The last prisoner did not return to Germany until 1948. There are no statistics for Italians staying in the country because their status changed in 1943 from prisoners of war to "co-operators" when Italy surrendered.
Ultimately there were more than half a million enemy soldiers held prisoner in the UK.
Most of the camps have been lost but a few, including the museum of Eden Camp, stand witness to this chapter of British history.
"Perhaps the most remarkable thing is how little disruption there was," said Mr Quinn.
"There were few escapes, very little crime and their presence allowed people - some of whom had never met a foreigner before - to see they were just people too."
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Belgian papillon Dylan may have taken the Crufts crown , but the judges were spoiled for choice as 27,000 dogs descended on the NEC over four days. Here are the facts and figures about the world's biggest dog show. | The Birmingham exhibition venue is accustomed to hosting hordes of human visitors, but with their four-legged friends in tow that was more dogs than there are households in the neighbouring postcode district.
I cani, les chiens, de honden
Out of almost 21,000 competing dogs (the rest were just visiting) 3,611 were from overseas.
Among the 44 other countries represented at Crufts, Italy led the way for foreign entries with 413, followed by France (389), the Netherlands (327) and Germany (325).
The number of overseas dogs fell very slightly for the first time in almost a decade. Organiser The Kennel Club said it was a "potential sign of concern" for dog owners travelling after Brexit.
The decrease was 0.3%, from 3,623 to 3,611 in one year.
Some new faces, but retrievers topped the entrants list
There were three breeds competing for the first time: the black and tan coonhound, the Russian toy and the white Swiss shepherd dog.
Retrievers, golden and Labrador, made up more than 1,000 of the competing dogs at Crufts.
Cocker spaniels have won Best in Show more than any other breed, with seven taking the trophy home in previous years. Irish setters, standard poodles and Welsh terriers have also won four times each.
128years since Crufts began
890"dog years"
220breeds competed for Best in Show in 2019
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Nick Hurd has been appointed Minister for London, replacing Jo Johnson who resigned last week. | Mr Hurd will take on the new role in addition to his responsibilities as Home Office Minister for Police and Fire Services, Downing Street said.
He is MP for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner in north London, and the son of former Foreign Secretary Lord Hurd.
Mr Johnson stepped down arguing Britain was "on the brink of the greatest crisis" since World War Two.
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Two Japanese climbers who scaled the Matterhorn in the Swiss Alps have been found dead on the mountain, according to the Japanese foreign ministry. | A spokesman said both men were in their 60s, but gave no further details.
The men reportedly ran into bad weather as they were coming down the mountain over the weekend.
Last week, the remains of two Japanese climbers who disappeared 45 years ago were found on the Matterhorn, one of Europe's highest mountains.
DNA tests helped identify those remains - the latest to have been discovered with the melting of ice on the mountain.
The 4,478m (14,700ft) Matterhorn has a distinctive pyramid-shaped peak, making it one of the world's most recognisable mountains.
Hundreds of people have died trying to reach the top.
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A man accused of murdering a schoolgirl from Flintshire 40 years ago has appeared at Mold Crown Court. | Stephen Hough, 57, of Flint, is charged with the rape, sexual assault and murder of 15-year-old Janet Commins.
Her body was found on a school playing field in Flint on 11 January 1976.
Mr Hough, who spoke only to confirm his name via video link, also faces separate charges of rape and sexual touching, alleged to have happened in February this year.
The case was adjourned until a hearing on 5 December.
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The Egyptian press has reacted angrily to the suicide bombing that targeted a Coptic church in Alexandria on New Year's Day, with several papers saying it was an attack on all Egyptians, not just Christians. | The state and opposition press called on their compatriots to unite in the face of terrorism but two papers suggested the underlying causes of sectarian tension should be tackled.
Elsewhere, Arab commentators speculated about who was behind the bombing, but two writers were concerned that the incident would prompt an exodus of Christians from the region.
EGYPT'S AL-AHRAM
People who think that what happened on Egyptian soil may have been a result of internal friction should reconsider... This cowardly attack... has taken the blinkers off. The message is clear. Egypt is targeted... everyone must urgently help to chop off the serpent's head that is spreading the poison of terrorism in the entire region.
EGYPT'S AL-AKHBAR
This treacherous criminal act not only targeted Egypt's Copts, but also its Muslims. It also targeted Egypt's stability, unity, destination and future... We are all in the same boat and we should join hands to confront those lurking to target Egypt's security.
EGYPT'S AL-JUMHURIYAH
The Egyptians' commitment to national unity increased after the blast at Alexandria's church... Feelings of anger were rampant and calls for unity and retribution grew, perhaps more from Muslims than Christians... this terrorist attack shocked the homeland and broke the hearts of all Egyptians.
ABBAS AL-TARABILI IN EGYPT'S AL-WAFD
I wish the state had taken the necessary precautions and had taken the threats by these militant groups seriously... It is not enough for a Muslim cleric to hug or kiss a Christian cleric.
AHMAD AL-SAWI IN EGYPT'S AL-MASRY AL-YOUM
The real battle is not against terrorism and will not end with the arrest of the sinful perpetrators. The real battle is against the environment that provokes tension.
DIYA RASHWAN IN EGYPT'S NAHDAT MISR
We need legislation to put an end to the Copts' state of frustration and all their problems.
YAHYA RABAH IN PALESTINIAN AL-HAYAT AL-JADIDAH
The explosion killed and injured Egyptians... Copts and Muslims. This shows that the criminal act was directed against Egypt - the fortress of moderation in the Arab world, Africa, and the Islamic world. This was a criminal attempt to undermine its great and enlightened role.
SAUDI AL-RIYADH
Targeting Egypt was not a haphazard act, but was done because Egypt is the powerhouse of a Middle East in crisis. Egypt was also a model of co-existence before it was placed in the line of terrorism by internal and external agents.
AHMAD AL-QUDWAH IN PAN-ARAB AL-ARAB AL-ALAMIYAH
It appears that sectarian incidents in Egypt are on the rise and there are people using these to achieve political objectives with dangerous repercussions.
TALAL AWKAL IN PALESTINIAN AL-AYYAM
The blast... was an extremely dangerous terrorist attack designed to undermine the unity of the Egyptian people. It could ignite a religious feud that could spread outside the Arab Republic of Egypt... All Egyptians agree that this conspiracy was woven by foreign hands and I think that Israel is the number one suspect.
MUHAMMAD JAMAL ARAFAH IN PALESTINIAN FILASTIN
I have no doubt whatsoever that the intelligence service of the Zionist enemy masterminded the criminal explosion that took place outside the al-Qiddissin Church in Alexandria. I also have no doubt that it was carefully prepared in a new way to pin the blame on the demented members of al-Qaeda in an attempt to start a feud between Muslims and Christians.
QATAR'S AL-RAYAH
Initial analysis points the finger at al-Qaeda... Other theories refer to the involvement of external forces that benefit from al-Qaeda's threats because they do not want Egypt to enjoy stability and welfare... They have a long-term aim to make the Copts feel persecuted, fearful and not tolerated, to start thinking about having a separate homeland.
SUBHI ZUAYTAR IN SAUDI AL-WATAN
The coming days will see incentives to make Egyptian Christians emigrate, as was the case in Iraq. Western planes will be ready to fly Egypt's Christians out and Western and Israeli media will reap the benefit.
URAYB AL-RINTAWI IN JORDAN'S AL-DUSTOUR
If the situation continues, it will not take long to declare the Middle East - the cradle of Christianity - Christian-free.
BBC Monitoring selects and translates news from radio, television, press, news agencies and the internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages. It is based in Caversham, UK, and has several bureaux abroad.
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A surprise announcement at this year's UN General Assembly has transformed the politics of cutting carbon, says the BBC's chief environment correspondent, Justin Rowlatt. As the meeting of the so-called "global parliament" comes to an end, he asks whether it might just signal the beginning of a global rush to decarbonise. | Justin RowlattChief environment correspondent@BBCJustinRon Twitter
You probably missed the most important announcement on tackling climate change in years.
It was made at the UN General Assembly.
It wasn't the big commitment to protect biodiversity or anything to do with the discussion about how to tackle the coronavirus pandemic - vitally important though these issues are.
No, the key moment came on Tuesday last week when the Chinese President, Xi Jinping, announced that China would cut emissions to net zero by 2060.
The commitment is a huge deal on its own, but I believe his promise marks something even more significant: China may have fired the starting gun on what will become a global race to eliminate fossil fuels.
I'll get to that later. First off, Xi's pledge.
Why is Xi's 2060 pledge so important?
It is fair to say environmentalists were stunned by Xi's surprise pledge.
Let's be clear what it means: China, the most polluting nation on earth - responsible for around 28% of global greenhouse gas emissions - is saying it is going cut that back to virtually zero within 40 years.
"Enormously important" is how Todd Stern - the man President Obama put in charge of climate negotiations - described it to me.
"A massive move" and "a happy, happy surprise" was Li Yan's take: she's the head of Greenpeace in China.
The commitment is so significant because China has never promised anything near as bold as this on climate before.
And it comes after the European Union committed billions of euros towards a green stimulus package and - only last week - toughened up its own 2030 climate targets.
It therefore raises the prospect of a carbon-cutting coalition of Europe and China covering more than a third of world emissions.
Why good news on climate is so rare
Climatologists just aren't used to such good news.
International negotiations to reduce carbon emissions all too often end in ugly squabbles.
With good reason, says Todd Stern, who was instrumental in making the most successful climate agreement to date: the Paris Agreement of 2015.
The problem is cutting carbon has always been regarded as an expensive chore.
The effort to control climate change impacts virtually every element of a country's economy, says Mr Stern, "so countries have traditionally been nervous about what they're going to be asked to do."
Indeed, Paris was the first time the world actually agreed that all nations needed to do their bit to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
And then, of course, the deal was promptly dumped by US President Donald Trump after he was elected the following year.
But even before the US said it wanted out, nobody involved in the negotiations thought the goals laid down in Paris were anywhere near strong enough to meet the objective of keeping the global temperature rise well below 2 degrees of pre-industrial levels.
The idea was that every five years countries would be asked to come up with more ambitious targets, ramping up their efforts.
The conference at which those new targets were to be discussed was to be held in Glasgow this November. Thanks to the pandemic it will now be held in November next year.
Many observers had expected China to keep its powder dry and produce any ambitious new targets with a flourish at a crucial moment in those negotiations.
So why now?
President Xi definitely had an eye on global politics.
His address was a very deliberate contrast to that of President Trump a couple of days earlier.
Where Trump blames China for the world's problems, Xi calls for global cooperation and highlights all the good work China has been doing.
He called on the world to work together, investing in a green recovery to lift the global economy from the post-Covid doldrums.
"We are living in an interconnected global village with a common stake," says Xi.
"All countries are closely connected and we share a common future. No country can gain from others' difficulties or maintain stability by taking advantage of others' troubles."
"we should embrace the vision of a community with a shared future in which everyone is bound together," he continues.
Heart-stirring stuff, eh?
It is also presumably no coincidence that Xi's announcement came weeks before the US Presidential election, and just as the terrible fires on the west coast and a series of fierce storms in the east made climate an issue in the polls for the first time.
And a cynic might think his reassuring words were partly a ploy to reingratiate China with the climate-conscious Europeans, and isolate a climate-sceptic US President. It came straight after a virtual bilateral summit between Beijing and Brussels.
A global race to clean power?
But there is a much more important broader context for his announcement: the fact that the collapsing cost of clean energy is completely changing the calculus of decarbonisation.
Renewables are already often cheaper than fossil fuel power in many parts of the world and, if China and the EU really ramp up their investments in wind, solar and batteries in the next few years, prices are likely to fall even further.
Why? Because the cost of renewables follows the logic of all manufacturing - the more you produce, the cheaper it gets. It's like pushing on an open door - the more you build the cheaper it gets, the cheaper it gets the more you build.
The Europeans have been quite open that their strategy is to entice other countries to join them by driving down the cost of renewables globally. Alongside this carrot, they also plan to wield a stick - a tax on the imports of countries that emit too much carbon.
Meanwhile, President Xi's 2060 pledge was notably unconditional - China will move ahead whether or not other countries chose to follow.
This is a complete turnaround from past negotiations, when everyone's fear was that they might end up incurring the cost of decarbonising their own economy, while others did nothing but still enjoyed the climate change fruits of their labour.
How things have changed. Very soon, renewable power is likely to be the cheapest and therefore almost certainly the most profitable choice in large parts of the world.
Think what this means: investors won't need to be bullied by green activists into doing the right thing, they will just follow the money.
Why invest in new oil wells or coal power stations that will become obsolete before they can repay themselves over their 20-30-year life? Why carry carbon risk in their portfolios at all?
The change of appetite on financial markets has become ever more obvious over the last decade. This year alone, Tesla's rocketing share price has made it the world's most valuable car company.
Meanwhile, the share price of Exxon - once the world's most valuable company of any kind - fell so far that it just got booted out of the Dow Jones Industrial Average of major US corporations.
And this is where the idea of a race comes in.
Countries - and companies - may soon rush to decarbonise as they see opportunities to make profits in what will be an enormous new market.
President Xi is well aware of his country's leading position in the market for clean energy - investing in renewables has been a priority for China for many years.
It is already the world's biggest manufacturer of solar panels and wind, it makes more electric cars and buses than anyone else and has also become the international hub for battery production.
"It is going to keep on driving down the prices, so that everybody can get onto this parade, as it were, and go along," says Rachel Kyte, Dean of the Fletcher School at Tufts University, in Medford, Massachusetts, and a former adviser to the UN Secretary General on sustainable energy.
So, it looks like Xi has judged that the economics of clean energy mean that decarbonising is now the most sensible choice for the Chinese economy as well as for the world's climate.
He is not alone. Look at how oil companies like BP and Shell are saying they want to move away from the black stuff and into clean energy.
So can we stop worrying about climate change?
Sadly we cannot.
The idea of a global race to decarbonise is a thrilling new prospect for anyone interested in limiting climate change, but I am sorry to say there are still many hurdles along the way.
First off, Mr Xi's did not give any details of how his country would achieve his carbon-neutral target.
Remember, China is by far the biggest consumer of coal in the world, hoovering up about half of the global supply.
It is also the world's second biggest user of oil - after the US.
Across its economy, some 85% of its power comes from fossil fuels with 15% from low carbon sources.
Those ratios will need to be turned on their head to have any chance of meeting the net zero pledge.
That will take eye-popping investment in wind, solar and nuclear power.
But all Xi said at the UN about how it would get to its 2060 goal was that China would peak its emissions of greenhouse gases "before 2030" - little change from China's previous promise that the peak would come "around" 2030.
Li Yan of Greenpeace says the acid test will be whether a raft of new coal plants proposed by provincial authorities are approved.
"Existing core industries are still fighting their survival in China," she says, "and that's why we're still seeing coal plants proposed everywhere."
We'll see whether they get the go-head - and how aggressive the investment in clean energy is - in a few months when the details of China's next five-year plan are published.
Another reason for optimism?
So even as the economics tilts in favour of renewables the task of decarbonisation is still enormous.
Meanwhile, the effects of climate change will only accelerate.
But there is another reason for optimism.
The US is the world's biggest economy and the second biggest producer of greenhouse gases, and is therefore essential to any effort to tackle climate change.
Under Donald Trump it has steered clear of carbon-cutting commitments.
But his challenger, Joe Biden, has said he will re-join the Paris accord, and has promised a $2 trillion green recovery plan for the US, which would aim to slash emissions and tackle the effects of climate change.
That holds out the promise of the world's three largest economies, responsible for nearly half of all emissions, all making a serious effort to cut carbon.
Once half the world is on-board with the project it is hard to see how the rest could hold out.
So - and this isn't something we often say about climate change - there are powerful new reasons for optimism.
Follow Justin on Twitter.
I've travelled all over the world for the BBC and seen evidence of environmental damage and climate change everywhere. It's the biggest challenge humanity has ever faced. Tackling it means changing how we do virtually everything. We are right to be anxious and afraid at the prospect, but I reckon we should also see this as a thrilling story of exploration, and I'm delighted to have been given the chance of a ringside seat as chief environment correspondent.
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To see the play The Secret River in the run-up to Australia Day, the national holiday marking the moment of British colonisation in 1788, is to be reminded in the most confronting of ways why many Aboriginal Australians continue to label it "Invasion Day." | By Nick BryantBBC News, Sydney
The drama, adapted from the bestselling novel of the same name by the Australian author Kate Grenville, tells the story of William Thornhill, a British convict pardoned in the early 19th Century who sets out with his young family to build a new life on the banks of the Hawkesbury River, to Sydney's north.
His plan is to farm a small plot of land, with little regard for the rights of its ancient custodians, the native Dharug people.
"What marks a man's name is a square of dug-over dirt and something to grow in it that hadn't been there before," the reformed petty criminal declares at the play's outset. "It's as good as raising a flag."
When spear-carrying tribesmen first confront Thornhill, he fears they are about to kill him and his two sons.
As their interactions grow, however, he comes to respect their bush skills and even aspects of their baffling culture.
Sal, his homesick wife who pines for their former life in London, comes to enjoy the company of the Aboriginal women.
His youngest son, Dick, befriends the boys of the tribe, and begins to master their language.
Thornhill, though, can never banish from his mind the two ideas with which he arrived: that the tribesman are encroaching on his land, rather than he on theirs; and that the "blacks" are murderous savages, a prejudice stoked into paranoia by the other settlers who have also converged on the Hawkesbury.
"Enabled by gunpowder and led by ignorance, greed and fear, a terrible choice was made," notes the play's director, Neil Armfield.
"It is a choice that has formed the present. Nine generations later, we are all living its consequences. The lucky country is blighted by an inheritance of rage and of guilt, denial and silence."
'Mythology of silence'
That is one of the reasons, along with its startling acting and beautiful staging, why The Secret River works so powerfully as theatre.
It speaks so directly to modern Australia.
"There's no use in investigating that history unless it is illuminating the present," says playwright Andrew Bovell. "The question of who we are is based on who we were."
He hopes the Sydney Theatre Company production, which has become the hottest ticket in Australian theatre, becomes a "conduit" for a broader discussion on the breach between black and white Australia.
"It's a sign of our maturity as a nation that we can talk more openly about these questions," says Mr Bovell, who also co-wrote the hit Australian movie, Strictly Ballroom. "Twenty years ago, there was almost a mythology of silence. We just didn't want to talk about it. There's a new openness."
The legacy of those first bloody confrontations between white settlers and indigenous Australians is still a matter of contention.
In recent decades, there has been something of a reckoning.
On land rights, the High Court's milestone Mabo decision, which last year marked its 20th anniversary, rejected the doctrine of "terra nullius", the idea that the continent was ownerless prior to British settlement.
Next month marks the fifth anniversary of Kevin Rudd's apology to members of the Stolen Generations, which was seen by many as a day of national atonement.
However, the gap in life expectancy between white and black Australians, which currently stands at 11.5 years for men and 9.7 for women, has proven devilishly hard to close.
Incarceration rates for Aborigines are also alarming.
The juvenile incarceration rate for young Aborigines is 31 times higher than the non-indigenous rate. In Western Australia, Aboriginal children make up 70% of the juvenile prison population.
Symbolic reconciliation efforts, like a proposed referendum to decide whether the Australian should finally recognise the first Australians, have also run into trouble.
Last September, the Gillard government shelved the original timetable, which would have seen a vote sometime this year, because it feared there was not yet sufficient community support for a change that many consider long overdue.
Only this week, the paucity of Aboriginal representation in parliament was highlighted by Julia Gillard's choice of the indigenous Olympian Nova Peris as a Labor party candidate in the Northern Territory.
Astonishingly, if Peris were to be elected to the Senate, she would become Labor's first indigenous parliamentarian (in 1971, Neville Bonnor, a Liberal Senator for Queensland, became the first indigenous member of the Australian parliament, while in 2010 Ken Wyatt, another Liberal, became the first Aborigine elected to the lower house).
'Communal mourning'
Noticeable over the past few years, however, has been a cooling off in the "history wars", the rancorous debate over how British colonisation and the Australian story should be interpreted.
Certain historians like Geoffrey Blainey, and leading politicians like John Howard, have bemoaned a "black armband" view of history, an unduly pessimistic take on white settlement.
Others, like former Labor Prime Minister Paul Keating, contested that white Australia needed to apologise for past sins. Rudd's historic "Sorry speech" in February 2008 quietened the battlefield, but by no means silenced it.
Books and plays like The Secret River, then, continue to be politically sensitive.
One of its greatest achievements is its nuance and balance. William Thornhill is not an entirely unsympathetic figure.
In trying to build his new life, and to escape his petty criminality, he embarks with good intentions. He comes to respect his neighbour, Thomas Blackwood, who lives with an Aboriginal woman, with whom he has a child.
He is plainly uncomfortable with "Smasher" Sullivan, the villain among former villains, who believes that the lash is the best way of dealing with "the blacks". It makes the denouement of the play all the more dispiriting.
"The play is not about dwelling in white guilt," says Mr Bovell. "It's not about self-flagellation. We've moved beyond that."
Perhaps the overriding emotional response to the play is one of sadness and frustration rather than of anger and shock.
Seeing the children play happily together, and the white and Aboriginal women respond to each other as sisters rather than foes, offers a glimpse of another possibility.
"You see Thornhill trying to move towards co-existence and mutual acceptance," says Andrew Bovell. "There could have been another way. There's a sense of communal mourning over what might have been."
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A council has pleaded guilty to a health and safety failing after the death of a 15-year-old boy who was hit by a school minibus. | Ashley Talbot died in December 2014 following the incident in the grounds of Maesteg Comprehensive School.
The teacher who drove the minibus was not prosecuted but the Health and Safety Executive brought a case against Bridgend council.
The council pleaded guilty to a health and safety breach.
The council pleaded guilty at Cwmbran Magistrates' Court on Tuesday, with the starting point for any potential fine £2.4m.
The case was sent to Newport Crown Court with a hearing set for 17 September.
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Call it Mini Super Tuesday, or Super Tuesday: The Sequel. No matter the name, a week after Joe Biden surged into the front-runner position, he consolidated his lead. The bottom line is the race now appears to be firmly in his control. | Anthony ZurcherNorth America reporter@awzurcheron Twitter
Six states held primary contests for the Democratic nomination, with the former vice-president winning Mississippi, Missouri and Michigan.
Results from Washington, Idaho and North Dakota are still to come in, and Bernie Sanders will hope to do better there.
But the Vermont senator has fallen further behind in the marathon race to decide who takes on Donald Trump in November.
Here are the key takeaways from the night.
The beginning of the end?
Four years ago, Michigan gave Bernie Sanders a surprise win - albeit a narrow, 49-48 one - breathing new life into a campaign that was struggling after Hillary Clinton dominated Super Tuesday.
This time around, the Midwestern state could mark the beginning of the end for his campaign.
The difference, according to exit polls, were white voters, union voters and college graduates. Sanders won all three groups in 2016. On Tuesday night, Biden put them in his column. He carried college graduates 51-44, whites 51-45 and union members - 30% of the primary electorate - 54-42.
Add that to Biden's already strong performance among black voters, late-deciders and those who are looking for someone who can beat Donald Trump, and it's the recipe for a comfortable win for the vice-president.
The ease of the result will raise new questions about whether the 2016 Michigan primary was a reflection more of Clinton's weakness rather than Sanders's strength. At the very least, it's evidence that rather than improving on his 2016 performance, the Vermont senator is falling short.
And if he's falling short in Michigan, his path to the Democratic nomination is narrowing fast.
On Tuesday night, for the first time this primary season, Sanders chose not to speak to his supporters after the polls closed. His silence, however, spoke for itself.
Biden wins the South
Mississippi was the first state to be called for Biden on Tuesday, and it was only the latest example of the strengths of his campaign - and another reason why the former vice-president appears to be in the driver's seat as the primary season unfolds.
As in South Carolina, the state that started Biden's political revival, more than 60% of the Mississippi electorate on primary night was black according to exit polls. And, as in South Carolina, the former vice-president dominated that demographic, to the tune of 86-11. The common refrain that a Democrat can't win the nomination without the support of black voters, somewhat in doubt after Sanders' dominating win in the Nevada Caucuses, now seems to once again be an ironclad rule.
The Mississippi result is also important because of what it means for the delegate calculations that will determine the nomination. Biden isn't just winning the state, he's dominating it. He's going to win the lion's share of the state's 36 delegates to the national convention, further extending his delegate lead. Given that delegates are awarded based proportionally, to catch up Sanders would have to start winning in some states by similarly large margins.
Barring some sort of drastic change in the race, that seems unlikely in the extreme. With every state Sanders loses, he falls farther behind - and the more improbable his comeback would be.
Bernie's youth vote
Once again, Bernie Sanders performed best with the youth vote, ages 17 to 29, according to exit polls. He carried it 82-15 in Michigan and 76-19 in Missouri, and only lost it by 4% in Mississippi, despite being routed in the state.
The problem for the Vermont senator, however, was that the age group averaged only 12.5% of the electorate in those three states - not nearly enough to save the day for Sanders. The epitaph for his campaign may be that it was premised, in part, on the passion of new young voters who simply did not show up in sufficient numbers at the polling booths.
While this may be good news in the short term for Biden, it is a flashing warning sign for the general election if he is the nominee. Young voters were a key part of the coalition that delivered the White House to Barack Obama in 2008, as he won them by a record 34% over John McCain. If the former vice-president does not find some way to improve his standing with this age demographic, he may suffer the same fate as Hillary Clinton, who only won the youth vote by 18%.
On Tuesday night, Biden made his pitch to Sanders' voters, perhaps with the autumn campaign in mind.
"I want to thank Bernie Sanders and his supporters for their tireless energy and their passion," he said. "We share a common goal, and together we'll defeat Donald Trump."
Of all those in the Sanders camp, the most tireless and passionate were his youngest fans. Perhaps this is the start of Biden's attempt to court their vote.
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House Prices will grow by 4% in Northern Ireland in the next year, the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) has predicted. | In spite of the increase, the organisation places Northern Ireland at the bottom of the league table for price growth in the United Kingdom.
Overall, prices in the UK are expected to see a rise of 8% over the coming year.
RICS said Northern Ireland house prices were now 54% below their peak.
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Photographers love to travel but sometimes it pays to look at what is close at hand and document the community you live in. Richard Beaven has done just that, turning his lens on the residents of Ghent, about 120 miles north of New York. | Phil CoomesPicture editor@philcoomeson Twitter
Beaven has worked on the project for a year or so and in that time he has made 275 portraits, about 5% of the population of Ghent.
"The catalyst for the project was the town's bicentennial in 2018 and creating an archive for it," says Beaven.
News of the project spread through the town, with one shoot leading to another and only a handful declining the opportunity to take part.
Each portrait is accompanied by the subject's name and the amount of time they had spent living or working in Ghent at the time of being photographed.
Beaven says: "My intent was to include as diverse a cross-section of the community as possible, with everyone who was photographed receiving a handmade print.
"Smartphone technologies have enabled us to capture billions of fleeting moments yet only a tiny fraction are intended to have lasting impact or to be printed and archived in any way.
"Photographs from the 19th and 20th Centuries are more readily to hand, often serving as our only tactile document of history.
"I printed a complete set of prints, which, along with a list of all subjects' names, will soon be given to the Ghent town historian for safekeeping in the town-hall attic.
"We're lucky in such a small town to have a historian who is diligently recording details and archiving for the future.
"I am also looking into the possibility of producing a book this year, which I believe would have broad appeal both locally in Ghent and with wider geographical audiences."
Beaven himself has lived in Ghent since 2005, though was born and grew up in Exeter, Devon.
"It's been fascinating to be able to observe and document the Ghent community, not to mention a privilege," he says.
"In many ways I see it simultaneously as an insider, because I live here, and as an outsider, as I am a British expatriate.
"At the core, it's my interest in and respect for the people here that has driven the work.
"It's hard to do this unless people understand that's your motivation.
"People gave much of themselves for the portraits and trust was very important.
"The portraits are of individuals. While I take care to select appropriate environments, I provide minimal direction in terms of clothing or what the subjects happen to be carrying at the time.
"The viewer is left to imagine and question for themselves what makes each subject unique or familiar based only on gesture, expression and setting.
"I arrived at Jean's house - she has been a resident here for 56 years - one day in June.
"She emerged from her house carrying a photograph of her husband, Walt, who had recently passed away.
"Walt was part of a long-standing Ghent family and well known in the town.
"She asked if she may hold the photograph for her portrait.
"At that point, my task was simply to find a simple background and nice light.
"Along the way I worked with piglets, sheep, rabbits, cats and dogs, which is a little more challenging when shooting on film and aiming for a single roll of film per person - 10 images.
"For me, there's a little bit of magic that happens in each and every portrait."
You can see more of Richard Beaven's work on his website.
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President Barack Obama's decision to end a long-standing policy granting temporary residency rights to Cubans arriving in the US without a visa has left many would-be migrants stranded. BBC Mundo's Valeria Perasso has been speaking to one Cuban father and daughter waiting in Mexico and now facing an uncertain future. | By Valeria PerassoBBC Mundo
Jose Enrique Manresa and his daughter Arianne were hoping finally to reach the US this week after a 48-day journey from their home in Cuba through South and Central America.
"We've lost everything." says Mr Manresa. "We risked everything on our journey and if we don't have the right to live in the US after all that, then there's no hope for us."
For 20 years Cubans have benefited from a policy introduced in the US by presidential decree which gave them the right to enter the country without a visa and remain for one year in order to apply for legal residence.
Since the rapprochement between Washington and Havana began in 2015, Cubans have been bracing themselves for the policy to be cancelled and the past two years have seen a sharp rise in the numbers of people seeking to move to the US while they still can.
But no-one was anticipating this week's sudden announcement.
Mr Manresa and his daughter were in a shelter in Tapachula, south-east Mexico, when they heard the news.
"We are so sad," said Mr Manresa, one of 20 Cubans living in the shelter.
"We are all calling our families in Cuba, we are desperate. I had to sell everything."
Mr Manresa's story is typical for his generation.
He has a degree in finance and economics and has worked for the Cuban state since the age of 22.
After 25 years, his salary as a manager overseeing five shops for a soft drinks company was the equivalent of just $20 (£16.40) a month.
Seeing no prospect of life improving he decided to take his chances and try to make it to the US to start a new life with his daughter.
It was a long, risky and expensive journey.
"I sold everything: my house, my appliances," he explains. "I got into a lot of debt as well to gather the $10,000 I needed to pay for the journey."
Mr Manresa's first destination was British Guyana where he paid the bulk of his money to traffickers who then took him on a complicated journey via Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Guatemala before finally reaching Mexico.
At the start of their journey he and his daughter were part of a group of 150 Cubans, but by the time they finally made it to the Mexican border there were just 20 people left.
Some had been detained by local police and others got lost along the way.
'Retaliation'
For many Cubans, the journey to the US now takes months, rather than the few weeks most anticipate.
Recently many South and Central American countries have implemented tighter rules for crossing their borders in order to deal with growing numbers of Cubans trying to make it to the US before the door finally closes.
Statistics from the US Customs and Border Protection Office showed that more than 45,000 Cubans entered the US in 2016, up from 25,000 in 2014.
Cubans in the United States
Sources: Pew Research Center; Cuban Research Institute
Most of these people are coming in through Mexico.
When Jose Enrique Manresa arrived in southern Mexico at the start of the week he discovered there were already 600 Cubans in the queue ahead of him waiting for an immigration permit to enter the US.
News that he may have arrived just too late has plunged him into despair.
"Obama, because he's leaving, suddenly takes the idea of repealing a law that has been going on for many years and has favoured many Cubans," he told the BBC.
Some Cuban migrants now even wonder if the decision could be "a reprisal" because so many Cuban Americans voted for Donald Trump, he added.
Mr Manresa and his daughter are now facing possible deportation to a detention centre in Cuba, and say all they have left is "a change of clothes and a pair of shoes".
"We do not know anything," he says. "We do not know what we are going to do."
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In March 1983, an unconventional series of books held the top three entries of the Sunday Times bestseller list. These were Fighting Fantasy books - stories "in which YOU are the Hero". All that you needed to take part was a pencil, eraser, dice and an active imagination, writes Peter Ray Allison. | Created more than 30 years ago by Games Workshop founders Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone, Fighting Fantasy continues to remain popular. The forthcoming Fighting Fantasy Fest in London will see dedicated fans coming from as far as Taiwan and Australia.
Fighting Fantasy came about after a representative of Penguin visited a "games day" event in 1980. "They were fascinated by a hall jam-packed with 5,000 people playing Dungeons & Dragons," says Livingstone, "They asked us to write a book about the hobby of role-playing."
Instead, Jackson and Livingstone convinced Penguin that a game book, which simulated the experience of role-playing, would be more effective. This book was The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, and the Fighting Fantasy series was born.
Fighting Fantasy employed, ahem, a non-linear, second-person narrative with a branching storyline. After reading a section, the reader would be invited to make a decision about how the story progressed. These choices could range from deciding which way to head down a corridor or whether to help a fair maiden (an invariably fatal decision in Fighting Fantasy).
Each decision would be associated with a section number that the reader would then subsequently read. These entries would continue the story into a series of branching narratives that would lead on to further adventures. Or an untimely demise.
For example: "Walking along the path you hear footsteps and arguing voices ahead of you. If you wish to meet their owners, turn to page 317. If you would rather hide in the bushes and let them walk by, turn to 300."
If you went to page 300, you saw "two pairs of pair of spindly legs in tattered cloth shuffle past you and the voices soon fade into the distance".
But page 317? "You encounter a pair of hobgoblins which you must FIGHT!"
Second-guessing such decisions were the essence of the fun. Would the apparently innocuous decision lead to a grisly encounter? Or would the dangerous-sounding option actually get you out of trouble?
Livingstone recalls sitting on a bus during the 1980s watching people read Fighting Fantasy. He was amused to see them bookmarking pages with their fingers in order to undo decisions which concluded with failure or death.
The Warlock of Firetop Mountain was not an immediate success, but this soon changed. "Playground chat was the virality of the game," explains Livingstone, "Children became completely taken over by the roleplaying, as suddenly this was the chance to experience a book where they were the hero."
Software developer Christopher Brind was a fan at the time. "The books had been out for a while by the time I started reading them, so I was able to hammer through a whole bunch of titles once I got addicted."
Dr David Waldron, a lecturer in History and Anthropology at Federation University Australia, collected a complete set of Fighting Fantasy: "I started when I was eight years old in the early 80s. For 30 years I have pottered about thrift shops for old copies to make a collection."
The Mechanics of Fighting Fantasy
Before starting a Fighting Fantasy gamebook, readers created a character by rolling dice to determine their character's Skill (proficiency in combat), Stamina (damage tolerance) and Luck.
The higher these statistics, the better you were (and the easier the gamebook became).
Throughout the gamebook, readers would face various enemies and monsters, from bandits and mercenaries to zombies and dragons. Each of these opponents would also have Skill and Stamina statistics.
Combat would be resolved by rolling dice and comparing the player statistics with that of the monsters (some readers would forego this mechanic, due to the practicalities of dice rolling whilst outside).
In Jonathan Green's forthcoming book, You Are The Hero - A History of Fighting Fantasy, he notes that while the books were targeted at boys, the character's gender in the gamebooks was never identified. Thus large numbers of girls also read Fighting Fantasy.
Not everybody liked the books. Livingstone recalls: "The Evangelical Alliance published an eight-page warning guide saying, because children were interacting with ghouls and demons, they would be interacting with the devil. One housewife phoned her radio station and said her son levitated having read one of my books. A vicar also threatened to tie himself to the gates at Penguin Books until Fighting Fantasy was banned."
But there was a clear positive. "It got children reading," says Livingstone.
With the success of The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, Penguin wanted more. Nearly 60 gamebooks would be commissioned, with writing duties delegated to authors such as Jonathan Green and Marc Gascoigne in later titles.
More from the Magazine
In an era of potent concern over internet pornography, cyber-bullying and drugs, it is hard to imagine a game being controversial. But 30 years ago Dungeons & Dragons was the subject of a full-on moral panic.
The great 1980s Dungeons & Dragons panic (11 April)
In Green's book, he discusses writers and creators who grew up reading Fighting Fantasy including novelist and screenwriter Alex Garland, author Joe Abercrombie and Moshi Monsters creator Michael Acton Smith. Labour MP Tom Watson was another fan of the series, and appeared in Ian Livingstone's Blood of the Zombies, released as part of the 30th anniversary.
Neil Rennison, creative director of Tin Man Games, describes the books as "my first portable gaming experience - I remember family holidays where I would take along a stack of Fighting Fantasy books". Rennison was approached by Livingstone to develop app adaptations of the books.
The influence of Fighting Fantasy continues to be felt today. "Without The Warlock of Firetop Mountain I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing today," explains author Graham McNeill. "It was the first book I read that opened my eyes to the possibility of being a writer."
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A man has appeared in court charged with attempted murder and road traffic offences after another man was hit by a car in Aberdeen. | A man in his 50s was seriously injured in an incident in the Bucksburn area at about 19:30 on Wednesday.
Michael Scott, 34, made no plea or declaration when he appeared in private at Aberdeen Sheriff Court.
He was remanded in custody and is due to appear in court again later this month.
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A new £750,000 footbridge has been lowered into place over the River Witham in Boston, Lincolnshire. | St Botolph's Bridge has replaced the old bridge that had been there for more than 40 years.
Lincolnshire County Council said the structure had been installed by Saturday evening.
The bow string design, chosen during a public consultation in January 2012, was partly funded by the local authority.
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Ally. Thug. All lives matter. White privilege. | These are just a few of the words and phrases you may have seen or heard in discussions about racial inequality after the death of George Floyd.
Many of these terms about race and activism are controversial - and people often have different ideas about what certain phrases mean. Their life experiences will also affect how they define them. So Radio 1 Newsbeat's been chatting with a couple of people for their interpretations and perspectives.
Kehinde Andrews is professor of black studies at Birmingham City University, director of the Centre for Critical Social Research, founder of the Organisation of Black Unity, and co-chair of the Black Studies Association.
JT Flowers is a 26-year-old American rapper, student and activist living in the UK, and Natasha March is an academic and activist from Manchester.
Thug
"Subverted by thuggery." "Thugs and criminals."
That's how Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Home Secretary Priti Patel have referred to people involved in violence that occurred at recent Black Lives Matter protests in the UK.
Donald Trump used the word in a tweet, flagged for inciting violence, that included the phrase, "When the looting starts, the shooting starts".
Its dictionary definition is "a violent person, especially a criminal," but it has become a loaded term when referring to black people.
A journalist who had traced the history of the word, told the BBC in 2015 that "thug" was brought to Western society from India in 1897, later used by politicians and in the media, even reclaimed by hip-hop artists such as Tupac and Bone Thugs-N-Harmony.
It was used widely to describe black people involved the Baltimore riots in 2015, and the use of the word still hurts today.
"They may as well just have the balls, have the bottle to say the N-word," says Natasha March.
"Racism hasn't changed, it's just become more discreet, clever, manipulated, gaslighted, and thrown back at us."
She believes people like Boris Johnson and Donald Trump, both from a wealthy, educated background, should have known what the implications of the word thug are.
"When you call an oppressed group thugs, what it does is it incites fear," she adds. "Fear of the other, fear of the immigrants, fear of the unknown."
"When you have fear you shut down your senses, you don't listen, you don't see, you don't intellectualise. You're on survival mode.
"And that is wonderful way to anesthetise a society, so they don't listen to the oppressed group. It's very clever."
Natasha says the use of the word thug is an attempt to steal the voices of Black Lives Matter protesters.
White privilege
White privilege - a term some find upsetting and offensive - refers to the concept that people have basic rights and benefits simply because they are white. It doesn't mean they haven't suffered hardship or that they don't have a tough life - just that their colour hasn't made it harder.
JT feels some people get defensive about this term because it's misunderstood.
"You might be a white person and still be poor with a lack of access to education or face a language barrier in the workplace. It doesn't mean you can't be disadvantaged in other ways," he tells Newsbeat. "It just means with respect to that one particular thing - your race and skin colour - you do have the luxury of not being able to think about it.
"It means having the luxury of being able to step outside without fearing that you're going to be discriminated against or oppressed in any way because of the colour of your skin," he says.
The most recent statistics from the Home Office and Ministry of Justice show:
Kehinde believes the benefits of whiteness can be "psychological" and that "there is a benefit to being white because you're not treated in the same way."
"There are different dimensions to it, some people have more privilege."
Kehinde tells us the phrase "white privilege" was first written by the famous black civil rights activist William Du Bois in the 1930s to explain the way white workers in America benefited from segregation and the colour of their skin.
Many argue black people have to deal with an extra burden of worrying about how they will be treated because of how people perceive them. Speaking in a special show on BBC Radio 1Xtra, DJ Ace said as a "huge black man with a beard" people find him "frightening".
"I have to live with this all day, every day and in every scenario.
"I'm aware my aesthetic is scary to some white people. Sometimes I might 'tone it down' and that embarrasses me".
"If I see a white woman coming down the street I might cross so she feels more comfortable."
White saviour
White saviour is usually used to describe somebody who appears to think certain communities '"need saving".
"It is a concept that's rooted in this idea that marginalised communities, particularly the black community, isn't empowered enough to liberate themselves," says JT.
He says in online spaces and activism it's usually used to point out when someone "takes it upon themselves to speak on behalf of black people or marginalised people," sometimes without understanding the circumstances.
JT says ideally people should "create space for black people to speak for themselves".
Last year, Stacey Dooley was criticised for making a film in Uganda for Comic Relief, and posting a picture on Instagram of her with a black child.
At the time, MP David Lammy said: "The world does not need any more white saviours". Stacey Dooley insisted there was "nothing sinister" about what she did - and has since said she wouldn't change what she did.
Following the row, Comic Relief's co-founder, the writer and director Richard Curtis, said the charity would use fewer celebrities in their films and be "very careful to give voices to people" who live in the areas being highlighted.
Ally / allyship
At first glance, this seems a contradiction to "white saviour".
JT describes an ally as "a person who's willing to stick their neck out and stand up for what's right when they see something going wrong".
Often, this is someone who is outside of the community they are trying to help - so in this case, it might be white people who want to support the black community.
"It's what can white people do?" says Kehinde.
JT believes an ally needs to do more than act like a "white saviour" and "take on some risk and bear the cost of actually standing up for justice".
"What we're trying to do in the States is push the dialogue to a place where people begin to consider what it would look like to be an accomplice.
He believes the best way to be an accomplice is to "create space for black people to speak for themselves."
All Lives Matter
This is often used as a response to the phrase "black lives matter' - the feeling from some people that all lives should be included in the conversation around race.
JT believes people who say it may not understand what the "black lives matter" phrase means.
"Imagine your house is on fire and somebody comes up to you and says, 'Hey all houses matter.'
"Your response would be along the lines of, 'Yes but your house isn't on fire so if all houses matter and your house is fine, then why is it so much to ask you to care when my house is burning down?'"
JT believes we live in a society where - at present, "black lives aren't valued in the same way that white lives are."
Silence = Violence
Again a controversial phrase which basically means the best way to address an issue is to speak about it - and staying quiet means you agree with what's going on.
"It's effectively just the idea that the status quo, our everyday reality at present, is a violent one for black people," claims JT.
"Refusing or failing to speak out on that is to be ok with things as they are.
"You don't have to post something on social media in order to act and live your life in an anti-racist way. If you see something going wrong on a street, you can speak up and do something."
JT realises many people can feel uncomfortable on speaking out or may feel it's not their place.
"If you notice that you feel unequipped to have conversations with people about race, you can take the time to educate yourself.
And speaking out doesn't have to mean posting on social media it can simply be about starting to talk honestly about race with those closest to you.
"You can have conversations with your friends and family members."
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Highland ponies have been introduced to Culloden Battlefield in the hope that their grazing keeps down scrub that threatens to overwhelm the site. | National Trust for Scotland (NTS) said the moorland battlefield would become woodland without the aid of the five animals.
The ponies - Fraoch, Ghillie Bhuidhe, Findhorn Paulo, Gordina and Grian - are from Newtonmore Pony Centre.
Government forces defeated a Jacobite army at Culloden on 16 April 1746.
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As he visits troops bolstering Nato's eastern border in Estonia in response to rising tensions with Russia, General Sir Nick Carter - the British army's top soldier - explains how the armed forces need to win support for their changing mission. | By Jonathan MarcusDefence and diplomatic correspondent
Public support in Britain for the Army has been consistently strong. But General Carter says there are risks here as well as benefits.
"That public support," he says, "is very much based upon sympathy and not necessarily upon empathy.
"And I think if we wish to sustain our numbers, and indeed the sort of attitude you would want your army to have, I think it's important that the cursor swings more towards empathy than sympathy, so that people understand more about what an army does and why you need an army, and therefore what its final task might be."
Of course the Army is about much more than that final task - "closing with and engaging the enemy".
But the unpopularity of some of Britain's recent wars, the lack of understanding about military matters among much of the public, and the increasing sensitivity to casualties, have all meant that the term "boots on the ground" - putting soldiers into harm's way - has become almost toxic.
General Carter has some sympathy with this view.
"I think the term 'boots on the ground' has become difficult for people to comprehend.
Unprecedented change
"The trick of course is for boots on the ground to be applied in a way that is not necessarily risk-free, but is done for appropriate gain and benefit."
This issue of the relationship between Britain and her army is a central aspect of General Carter's thinking.
He is speaking at an Estonian army base in Tapa, a garrison town a little under 100 miles from the Russian border.
The general is visiting the British-led multi-national battle group, which is there as part of a Nato deployment to reassure the Estonians and to demonstrate the alliance's cohesion to Moscow.
"Young people join an army to be used and that is important to us," he says.
"So the opportunity to do something like we are doing up here in Estonia is important.
"But we also need to be prepared to be used in other ways as well, providing we can be used in an effective fashion."
For the British army, this is a period of unprecedented change as it transitions away from a dominant focus on counter-insurgency operations in the heat of Iraq and Afghanistan, and re-builds its capability to fight modern high-intensity combat - the sort of conflict it trained for day-in and day-out during the Cold War years.
Lessons of history
The strategic picture is also changing dramatically.
The potential threats are becoming more complex, the dividing line between peace and war ever less clear.
Some people argue that the modern, Western way of war is at arm's-length - exemplified by armed drones and stand-off weapons fired at great distances from their intended targets.
By such readings the traditional army - leaving aside maybe the special forces - seems strangely out of step with the apparent new reality.
But General Carter disagrees.
"I don't subscribe to the view that we find ourselves in a new era of warfare where you can do it all with stand-off; you can do it all with bombing; you can do it all with special forces and you can do it all with proxies," he tells me emphatically.
"Those are all simply fallacies. The bottom line in all of this is that, in the final analysis, people live on land and it is ultimately the land component that has to 'mix it' where people live. History proves that that is a requirement.
"Our policy makers absolutely understand that you have an army because, in the final analysis, armies are the business when it comes to a decision, and ultimately it's about a decision."
'Adequate numbers'
Britain's army is of course an awful lot smaller than it once was.
How big should it be in part depends upon what the country can afford. So does General Carter think that he has enough soldiers?
"The straightforward answer to that question is that given the tasks that we have currently got, we have adequate numbers," he says.
"If the tasks change or the tasks increase then we might have to ask questions about it."
On equipment he is confident that the Army will get things that it needs, though "how quickly it arrives is always a question".
But the Army itself is going to change even more dramatically in the years ahead. And this too is something that General Carter is pushing forward.
Traditionally the Army - like most others - is what he terms "bottom-fed".
In other words, "it recruits people who are youngsters and we grow them through a career".
But he believes that as the Army requires and takes on more specialists, it is going to have to offer a very different career structure.
"I suspect," he says, "that maybe as much as 30% of the army may be specialists in the future - and how we supply those specialist career schemes is something we have to think about."
This could mean a lot more of what the Army calls "lateral entry" (ie joining at a much later age, probably from an established career) or indeed sharing people with industry.
Nonetheless, at least in his lifetime, General Carter does not expect the combat arms of the Army "to look particularly different" to the way they do today.
"I think we will still deliver that effect through a bottom-fed delivery system in the way that we understand it."
But he says specialists will need to be recruited differently and that will have significant implications requiring a review of ranks, career structures, working practices and so on.
'Miscalculation risk'
General Carter thinks that the Army is about a year or two away from taking on regular personnel by this lateral entry method.
But the core business of the Army is not going to change.
While its roles go way beyond just training for high-intensity combat, as here in Estonia, it remains part of the nation's insurance policy.
So being so close to the Russian border, what security challenge does the general worry about most?
"Probably the greatest risk at the moment," he says, "is the risk of miscalculation.
"Understanding your potential opponents," he says, "and having the communications systems in place and the processes in place so that you realise what messages you are sending is fundamental.
"Miscalculation is the thing that we probably need to watch."
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Dogs are known as man's best friend and their powerful sense of smell means they also have the potential to save lives - detecting changes in blood glucose levels in type 1 diabetes patients and urine samples from those with prostate cancer. | Magic leaps up, placing his paws on his owner's knees, his brown eyes staring into hers.
It is a routine he has done thousands of times.
Magic is a medical alert assistance dog, and has been trained to detect a minute shift in the blood sugar levels of his owner, Claire Pesterfield.
Using his superior sense of smell, he is capable of detecting tiny odour concentrations - around one part per trillion.
Without Magic's assistance, changes in her blood sugar levels could put her at risk of a seizure, or - in extreme cases - the onset of a coma.
Claire has type 1 diabetes, but - unlike most people with the condition - her body does not display the warning signs that a dangerous episode might be about to occur.
"I've used all the latest technology that's out there, and it still doesn't give me enough warning to prevent the episodes, or make them less severe," she tells the BBC's Victoria Derbyshire programme.
"But Magic can give me up to a 30-minute warning that I need to take action.
"In the three and a half years we've been together, he has alerted and potentially saved my life 3,500 times. And he does it all for a dog biscuit.
"I know without him, I wouldn't be alive today."
Claire works as a children's diabetes nurse, supporting and educating children with type 1 diabetes and their families.
She says she would not be able to do the job were it not for Magic, as she would be at risk of collapsing mid-meeting.
"Without him I would be testing my blood glucose level every 20 or 30 minutes, to try and pre-empt what was going to happen," she explains.
Having Magic also sends the message to the children she works with, she adds, that, "You can still live life to the full when you've got diabetes."
'I was exhausted'
Magic sleeps by Claire's bed each night.
When he detects a change in her blood glucose level, he prods her with his paw to wake her up.
"Before I got Magic I would be up every hour, trying to check my blood glucose level, trying to predict when these episodes would happen," she explains.
"That meant that I was exhausted. Many a time I would be too afraid to go to sleep in case I had an episode and wouldn't wake up.
"Now I know my husband won't have to worry that when he wakes up in the morning I'm going to be dead next to him.
"Simple things like that are very hard to put into words."
Infected cells
NHS trials are currently assessing if dogs could also be used to detect prostate cancer.
The research being conducted offers an opportunity for the disease to be detected at an early stage - vital for improving survival rates.
The dogs - usually from the gundog breed, such as labradors and springer spaniels - are taught to detect a sample of urine from a patient with prostate cancer.
It is thought that the dogs can pick up the odour of cancer "volatiles", which travel from the infected cells into the urine as the body tries to dispose of the chemicals.
When they correctly detect a sample containing these volatiles, they are given a treat as positive reinforcement.
The dog's performances are recorded, and those that make the grade have more than a 90% success rate at detecting a sample from a patient with prostate cancer.
'Bio-sensor'
Dr Claire Guest, co-founder of the charity Medical Detection Dogs, realised she had breast cancer after her dog, Daisy, began nudging an area of her chest which felt bruised.
Tests later revealed she had two tumours.
This potentially life-saving experience sparked her interest in the capabilities of detection dogs.
"Although the dog has a fluffy coat and a waggy tail, he is in fact a highly sophisticated bio-sensor," she explains.
"Evolution has given him this highly sensitive nose, going down to parts per trillion. So we're talking about a science here.
"People board planes every day that have been screened by detector dogs to see if there are explosives on board. That's a life-or-death decision.
"Why do we rely on them there but not assisting us with health?"
Currently, cancer detection dogs do not receive any government funding, but Conservative MP Iain Duncan Smith hopes that can change.
He discovered the charity's work through his wife Betsy, who - after having breast cancer - became a trustee at Medical Detection Dogs.
Mr Duncan Smith believes the "pioneering research doesn't just have the potential to save lives, but also to save our NHS many millions of pounds".
England's Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt told him he will consider the findings of the NHS trial when published.
"I think ideas like this sometimes don't get looked at as quickly as they should, because they sometimes get put in the quackery box.
"I will personally look at this research when it comes through. One of our jobs as MPs is to question orthodoxies and look at different ways of doing things that possibly the establishment has swept under the carpet.
"If this research is good, I want to know about it."
Watch the Victoria Derbyshire programme on weekdays between 09:00 and 11:00 on BBC Two and the BBC News Channel.
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The Duchess of Cornwall has called for a new name for English sparkling wine to match the grandeur of champagne. And for the first time, domestic wine is the most popular in the government's cellar. Have Britons developed a taste for a home-grown tipple? | By Tom de CastellaBBC News Magazine
Someone arrives with a bottle of English wine. Cue excitable voices saying, "Gosh, English wine is really quite good, you know - it gives champagne a run for its money."
The surprise used to be palpable.
But English wine has grown up. Today it regularly wins awards - there were four gold medals at the International Wine Challenge (IWC) this year.
It's a far cry from English actor Peter Ustinov's put down: "I imagine hell like this - Italian punctuality, German humour and English wine."
But is there something holding English wine back? It accounts for just 0.25% of total wine sales in the UK, according to industry body English Wine Producers.
This week the Duchess of Cornwall called on producers to come up with a name.
"People should put their heads together and think of a new name for English sparkling wine," she said while visiting Hambledon Vineyard in Hampshire. "It should be something with much more depth. I plan to find a new word for it."
So is new terminology the final piece in the jigsaw?
English wine has been through a revolution. Old grape varieties are out, new owners are in. The area of vines planted in England and Wales has doubled from 761 hectares in 2004 to about 1,500 hectares today. The country now has 434 vineyards.
Figures just released by the Foreign Office on the government's wine cellar, show that for the first time more English wine was drunk at government hospitality events than wine from any other nation.
Andrew Neather, Evening Standard wine critic, says the new winemakers tend to be go-ahead types from the City or wealthy lawyers, who want to carve out another career.
They are focusing on sparkling wine, planting more of the traditional champagne grapes - chardonnay, pinot noir and pinot meunier. In 2010, for the first time more than half of the vintage went into sparkling wine.
Three of this year's four IWC gold medal winners were sparkling wines. In June, Majestic announced that sales of English sparkling wine trebled in 2012, encouraged by the Jubilee and Olympics.
There is logic to England focusing on fizz. Kent and West Sussex, where the best English sparkling wine originates, are only about 90 miles north of Champagne. The chalky soils around the North and South Downs are very similar to the earth where famous names such as Bollinger and Dom Perignon plant their grapes.
English vineyards
The best English sparking wine is as good as "decent" champagne, Neather says. England's top seller - Nyetimber - has more to offer than a mass market champagne like Moet Imperial, he argues.
"It's more interesting, has more complexity and better acidity." The Moet costs more at £32.99 - although it is sometimes discounted - while Nyetimber is £29.99.
The Financial Times wine critic, Jancis Robinson agrees, albeit with a couple of caveats.
"Most English fizz is now very well made and attractively dry and zesty. But very little has any real complexity since producers generally cannot afford to age it very long." And cost is a problem. "It's never a bargain," Robinson says.
"It is generally made by people who have invested a great deal in new vineyards or winemaking and need to see a return."
The competition can be significantly cheaper whether prosecco, cava or own-brand champagne. Aldi, for example, sells champagne for just £12.99.
Despite the cost premium, patriotism and the fashion for local provenance suggests that current levels of production are outstripped by demand.
"The industry sells everything it produces," says Julia Trustram Eve, spokeswoman for English Wine Producers. "Demand is exceeding supply."
Production is still tiny in international terms. Champagne alone produces more than 300 million bottles a year, compared with England's total annual wine production of about 3-4 million bottles. Tesco sells only three English wines. Waitrose stocks 57 but this still only accounts for 0.6% of the wine it sells.
But there is momentum building, and big name involvement. The Queen is planning to sell wine from vines at Windsor Great Park. And next year the Waitrose vineyard at Leckford, Hampshire, will put its first bottles on sale.
Frazer Thompson, chief executive at the Chapel Down vineyard in Kent, believes that English wine can grow quickly. Over the next decade, English producers should aim to move from today's 2% of the UK sparkling wine market to 10 or 15%, he says.
Such a prediction will raise eyebrows. But Thompson cites the rapid growth of Chapel Down, which was selling 25,000 bottles of its non-vintage Brut for £5.99 when he joined 12 years ago. Today it sells 200,000 bottles at £18.99.
Sparkling wine from the southern counties seems here to stay. But English still wine divides the experts. "I have had credible chardonnay in this country but it tends to have so much acidity that it's better in sparkling wine," says Neather.
As a result of its lack of sunshine, the first English growers traditionally planted fast-ripening varieties like sevyal blanc, bacchus, and muller-thurgau. It's a problem, he believes.
"You're never going to make decent wine from muller or bacchus. They're just rubbish."
Julia Stafford, owner of Wine Pantry - two London shops selling exclusively English wine - disagrees. Part of English wine's charm is not just the success of its sparklers but its distinctive local grapes. "Bacchus hasn't got sauvignon blanc tropical fruits," Stafford says. "Instead it's like licking a Constable painting. You can smell the hedge rows and taste the English countryside."
Stafford conjures up an English wine vocabulary that might appeal to the Duchess of Cornwall. Up to now the language of wine - Champagne, terroir, vin de table, appellation controlee, premier cru - has been French.
The owners of Coates and Seely vineyard in the North Hampshire Downs have pushed the "Britagne" badge for sparkling wine.
"It is a brand which belongs to Coates and Seely, which we use for our own wine, and which we will invite other vineyards working closely with us to use," says Christian Seely. "It is definitely not intended as a generic term for all English sparkling wines." So Camilla's search for the right term goes on.
But language is not the real problem for English wine, Neather says. The big hurdle, even with climate change, is the weather. Last year Nyetimber ditched its entire harvest after a terrible summer.
"This is the big challenge of the English climate - getting the damned grapes to ripen," he says.
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"The firestorm is incredible... Insane fear grips me and from then on I repeat one simple sentence to myself continuously: 'I don't want to burn to death'. I do not know how many people I fell over. I know only one thing: that I must not burn." | By Toby LuckhurstBBC News
On 13 February 1945, British aircraft launched an attack on the eastern German city of Dresden. In the days that followed, they and their US allies would drop nearly 4,000 tons of bombs in the assault.
The ensuing firestorm killed 25,000 people, ravaging the city centre, sucking the oxygen from the air and suffocating people trying to escape the flames.
Dresden was not unique. Allied bombers killed tens of thousands and destroyed large areas with attacks on Cologne, Hamburg and Berlin, and the Japanese cities of Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
But the bombing has become one of the most controversial Allied acts of World War Two. Some have questioned the military value of Dresden. Even British Prime Minister Winston Churchill expressed doubts immediately after the attack.
"It seems to me that the moment has come when the question of bombing of German cities simply for the sake of increasing the terror, though under other pretexts, should be reviewed," he wrote in a memo.
"The destruction of Dresden remains a serious query against the conduct of Allied bombing."
This story contains graphic images.
Dresden is the capital of the state of Saxony. Before the bombing it was referred to as the Florence on the Elbe or the Jewel Box, for its climate and its architecture.
By February 1945, Dresden was only about 250km (155 miles) from the Eastern Front, where Nazi Germany was defending against the advancing armies of the Soviet Union in the final months of the war.
The city was a major industrial and transportation hub. Scores of factories provided munitions, aircraft parts and other supplies for the Nazi war effort. Troops, tanks and artillery travelled through Dresden by train and by road. Hundreds of thousands of German refugees fleeing the fighting had also arrived in the city.
At the time, the UK's Royal Air Force (RAF) said it was the largest German city yet to be bombed. Air chiefs decided an attack on Dresden could help their Soviet allies - by stopping Nazi troop movements but also by disrupting the German evacuations from the east.
RAF bomber raids on German cities had increased in size and power after more than five years of war.
Planes carried a mix of high explosive and incendiary bombs: the explosives would blast buildings apart, while the incendiaries would set the remains on fire, causing further destruction.
Previous attacks had annihilated entire German cities. In July 1943, hundreds of RAF bombers took part in a mission against Hamburg, named Operation Gomorrah. The resulting assault and unusually dry and hot weather caused a firestorm - a blaze so great it creates its own weather system, sucking winds in to feed the flames - which destroyed almost the whole city.
The attack on Dresden began on 13 February 1945. Close to 800 RAF aircraft - led by pathfinders, who dropped flares marking out the bombing area centred on the Ostragehege sports stadium - flew to Dresden that night. In the space of just 25 minutes, British planes dropped more than 1,800 tons of bombs.
As was common practice during the war, US aircraft followed up the attack with day-time raids. More than 520 USAAF bombers flew to Dresden over two days, aiming for the city's railway marshalling yards but in reality hitting a large area across the city.
On the ground, civilians cowered under the onslaught. Many had fled to shelters after air raid sirens warned of the incoming bombers.
But the first wave of aircraft knocked out the electricity. Some came out of hiding just as the second wave arrived above the city.
People fell dead as they ran from the flames, the air sucked from their lungs by the fire storm. Eyewitness Margaret Freyer described a woman with her baby: "She runs, she falls, and the child flies in an arc into the fire... The woman remains lying on the ground, completely still".
Kurt Vonnegut survived the bombing as a prisoner of war in Dresden.
"Dresden was one big flame. The one flame ate everything organic, everything that would burn," he wrote in his work Slaughterhouse-Five.
He described the city after the attack as "like the moon now, nothing but minerals. The stones were hot. Everybody else in the neighbourhood was dead."
In total, the British lost six bombers in the attack, three to planes accidentally hitting each other with bombs. The US lost one.
Nazi Germany immediately used the bombing to attack the Allies. The Propaganda Ministry claimed Dresden had no war industry and was only a city of culture. Though local officials said about 25,000 people had died - a figure historians agree with now - the Nazis claimed 200,000 civilians were killed.
In the UK, Dresden was known as a tourist destination, and some MPs and public figures questioned the value of the attack. A story at the time published by the Associated Press news agency said the Allies were conducting terror bombing, spreading further alarm.
US and UK military planners, however, insisted the attack was strategically justified, in the same way as attacks on other cities - by disrupting industry, destroying workers' homes and crippling transport in Germany.
A 1953 US report on the bombing concluded that the attack destroyed or severely damaged 23% of the city's industrial buildings, and at least 50% of its residential buildings. But Dresden was "a legitimate military target", the report said, and the attack was no different "from established bombing policies".
The debate about the Allied bombing campaign, and about the attack on Dresden, continues to this day. Historians question if destruction of German cities hindered the Nazi war effort, or simply caused civilian deaths - especially towards the end of the conflict. Unlike an invasion like D-Day, it is harder to quantify how much these attacks helped win the war.
Some argue it is a moral failing for the Allies, or even a war crime. But defenders say it was a necessary part of the total war to defeat Nazi Germany.
It has even become a symbol for conspiracy theorists and some far-right activists - including Holocaust deniers and extremist parties - who have quoted Nazi casualty figures as fact and have commemorated the bombing.
Seventy-five years later, the bombing of Dresden remains a controversial act.
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The discovery of claw marks in a bone-filled cave in Australia suggests an extinct, "anatomically bizarre" predator was able to climb trees and rocks, meaning it would have been a threat to humans, writes Myles Gough. | Australia's extinct marsupial lion, Thylacoleo carnifex, was the continent's top predator at the time of human arrival 50,000 years ago.
Weighing more than 100kg, the animal had sharp claws and a powerful jaw, and shearing teeth that could rip through the flesh of its prey, which included giant kangaroos, rhinoceros-sized herbivores known as diprotodon, and possibly humans.
But while experts agreed on the marsupial lion's fearsomeness, whether or not they could climb rocks and trees has been a source of contention.
Some speculated that the lions' anatomy would lend itself to climbing, while others argued they would have been too heavy to clamber up to high places.
Now palaeontologists at Flinders University say they have found the answer in a cave in Western Australia where marsupial lions left thousands of scratch marks.
'Significant threat to humans'
The scratch marks, mostly made by juveniles and clustered on a near-vertical rock surface leading to a now-sealed exit, suggest two things about the lions: they were skilled climbers, and they reared their young inside caves.
"[Our findings indicate] the [marsupial] lions were running up and down these rock piles to get out of the cave, and they weren't using the lower-gradient, longer route," says associate professor Gavin Prideaux, who supervised the research.
"We can be confident now and say that they could climb.
"And if they could climb really well in the dark, underground, there's no reason they couldn't climb trees.
"They would have been a very significant threat to people when they first arrived in Australia.
"What we're dying for are different lines of evidence that shed light on the behaviour or ecology of these animals, and that's what we've been presented with in the form of these claw marks."
The team's findings, which reinforce some contentious ideas about the behaviour of these "highly adapted" and "anatomically bizarre" predators, have been published in Nature's open-access journal Scientific Reports.
Identifying the scratch marks
The claw markings were found inside the Tight Entrance cave near the Margaret River.
In the mid-90s, bones inside the cave were identified as belonging to extinct megafauna, dating from 30,000 to 150,000 years old, says Prof Prideaux.
Between 1996 and 2008, he went on numerous expeditions to the cave to collect fossils, and during that work discovered the scratch marks.
"We had the feeling that they were probably Thylacoleo scratch marks, but we had to test it," he says.
Prof Prideaux and his honours student, lead author Samuel Arman, established a list of seven species of animal that could have been responsible.
It included the extinct marsupial lion, as well as Tasmanian tigers and Tasmanian devils, which used to live on the mainland, wallabies, koalas, possums and wombats.
Mr Arman left scratch pads inside zoos and wildlife parks, and collected tree bark to get sample claw markings from the living animals, which he compared to those inside the cave.
Lions and devils
This helped the researchers narrow their list to two key suspects: marsupial lions and Tasmanian devils. But they needed another clue.
"We went through the more than 10,000 bones we collected from the cave to look for evidence for bite marks or little chewed-up bones [which are] absolute hallmarks of devil dens," says Prof Prideaux.
"We found zero of that."
"This is more consistent with what we've inferred about the behaviour of Thylacoleo from its dental morphology, and that is, it was primarily a meat eater and not a bone cruncher."
Mr Arman also reconstructed a skeletal hand of the marsupial lion and made mock scratches on modelling clay that "perfectly matched" the large ones found in the cave.
The animals, which became extinct around 46,000 years ago, lived all across the continent. Prof Prideaux suspects similar claw markings exist in caves elsewhere, but have yet to be discovered.
Dr Judith Field, an expert in megafaunal extinctions from the University of New South Wales, says "the methods used to determine the size of the animal making the marks appear well conceived and well executed".
"It is highly likely these marks were made by Thylacoleo," she told the BBC. "They are probably the only animal with claws large enough to effect these scratch marks."
Still, Dr Field expressed some reservations about the study: "Most of the conclusions are speculation," she said. "Great discovery, and a neat story, but these assertions about their behaviour have yet to be substantiated by empirical data."
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A man died when his motorcycle was involved in a crash with a car in Leeds. | The collision happened on the A64 York Road at the junction with Somerville Green at about 16.18 GMT on Friday.
Police said the rider of the motorbike, a 29-year-old local man, was treated by paramedics at the scene but was pronounced dead.
The driver of the car stopped at the scene and has been spoken to by officers.
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She 'discovered' Twiggy, introduced the world to bikinis and, as the boss of 1960s Vogue, paved the way for every formidable fashion editor that followed. Now a new documentary, Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel, delves deeper into the legend. | Originally intended to be a book, director Lisa Immordino Vreeland - Diana's granddaughter-in-law -ultimately decided it would be more fun to bring the late "Empress of fashion" back to life on screen.
She calls the documentary an "intimate portrait" of the former Vogue editor-in-chief, who died in 1989, and whom many view as one of the most influential women of the 20th Century.
"The fashion editor never existed before her," says Immordino Vreeland. "It was a term that she coined from her 26 years at Harper's Bazaar."
Formerly a globe-trotting wife and mother, Vreeland's fashion career started in 1936, when Bazaar editor Carmel Snow hired her after admiring her unique style and gown at a party.
Her foray into journalism began with the provocative 'Why Don't You?' column. In it, she shunned the usual 'how to make your husband happy' advice, in favour of suggesting people wash their blonde children's hair in flat champagne to make it shine.
'The golden years'
Years later, when she was passed over for the top job at Bazaar, she left to become editor-in-chief of Vogue.
"Vogue was really not an important magazine at the time - she made it into the golden years of Vogue," explains Immordino. "She just recorded everything that was going on in the sixties, the whole zeitgeist."
Vreeland certainly had her pick of talent, launching models such as Lauren Bacall, Anjelica Huston and Twiggy - models who "had personalities" - and working with photographers such as David Bailey and Richard Avedon, who dubbed her his "crazy aunt".
In the documentary, Bailey reveals that she was the first to put a picture of an unknown Mick Jagger in a fashion magazine.
Instead of classic ideas of beauty, she highlighted the unusual and imperfect, such as photographing Barbara Streisand in profile to emphasise her generous nose.
Immordino Vreeland spent "easily a year" going through all the magazines - two and a half decades worth of Bazaar and nine years of Vogue - and fashion stories fill the documentary.
"It's really a celebration of a century... not just a celebration of fashion," she explains. "I think it's exciting to see how she transcended fashion."
Hollywood inspiration
The film has already been dubbed "the original Devil Wears Prada" - and not just because it makes a catchy marketing slogan.
While current Vogue boss Anna Wintour is widely believed to have been the inspiration behind the hit novel and subsequent film, Vreeland was also partial to the odd throwing-her-coat-in-an-assistant's-face moment.
It is thought she was the inspiration for both the domineering fashion editor in the Audrey Hepburn film Funny Face - played by Kay Thompson - and Ms Maxwell in 1966 French fashion satire, Who Are You, Polly Magoo?
"To have not only Funny Face, but also Polly Magoo based on you marks you down a little bit in history," says Immordino.
"But she was clearly not happy with Funny Face. When she saw it in New York she said, 'I never want to talk about it again'."
Vreeland wrestled with her looks early on in life, thanks to her mother's nickname of "my ugly little monster", but through dance and fashion she set about transforming herself into a "dazzling persona".
The film features more than 40 interviewees, including some of fashion's biggest names, paying tribute to her wit, charm and talent as a fashion visionary.
Fact or fiction?
After being fired from Vogue in 1971 it is rumoured Vreeland spent a year in bed, before finding a purpose again at the age of 70, working at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute.
There she reinvented the fashion exhibition, and often the "historical truth", according to the museum's Harold Koda.
The same was true of Diana Vreeland's real life. She partied with Andy Warhol and gave fashion advice to Jackie Kennedy, yet still she would embellish everyday life to make it more exciting.
When asked to qualify if something was fact or fiction, she famously replied: "Faction!"
"She had a special filter," acknowledges Immordino. "She took things in and they just kind of came out imbued with a whole other veneer.
"The fact that perhaps it was a little bit factually incorrect, that's not what was important. What was important is that she was always trying to paint a prettier picture for us. Ultimately she was always telling us a story."
Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel is in cinemas now. It will be released on DVD on 29 October.
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A British charity worker who’s just visited camps holding more than a quarter of a million refugees in Sri Lanka says the
military authorities in charge there are urgently concerned about the approaching monsoon. | There was what many feared was an indication of things to come when sudden storms flooded these vast camps last month, submerging
toilets, contaminating water and damaging thousands of huts.The monsoon is due next month.
An official of the UK-based Catholic Fund for Overseas Development or CAFOD, Geoff O’Donoghue, has just visited the camps
with two British bishops, and said one of the military officers in charge there is overseeing an extension of the camp to
ease crowding.
Speaking to BBC correspondent Charles Haviland in Colombo Geoff O’Donoghue said “As the monsoon comes in there is deep concern,
both expressed by the brigadier in the camp and workers in the camp and others outside that a potential crisis could brew
there if the rains come through and those camps are still as congested”
The Sri Lankan authorities are still preventing nearly all those in the camps from leaving. The government has just announced,
though, that relatives or friends of those inside can now apply to accommodate them.
Such relatives, like the camp dwellers, will also be subject to screening for possible links with the defeated Tamil Tiger
rebels.
Meanwhile the Catholic Church has proposed that 12,000 of the displaced people be allowed to move to a large local church
and shrine as a first step to returning home.
O’Donoghue of CAFOD said the plan had passed several stages of government approval.
|
In the last two decades, dozens of scientific papers have been published on the biological origins of homosexuality - another announcement was made last week. It's becoming scientific orthodoxy. But how does it fit with Darwin's theory of evolution? | By William KremerBBC World Service
Macklemore and Ryan Lewis's hit song Same Love, which has become an unofficial anthem of the pro-gay marriage campaign in the US, reflects how many gay people feel about their sexuality.
It mocks those who "think it's a decision, and you can be cured with some treatment and religion - man-made rewiring of a predisposition". A minority of gay people disagree, maintaining that sexuality is a social construct, and they have made a conscious, proud choice to take same-sex partners.
But scientific opinion is with Macklemore. Since the early 1990s, researchers have shown that homosexuality is more common in brothers and relatives on the same maternal line, and a genetic factor is taken to be the cause. Also relevant - although in no way proof - is research identifying physical differences in the brains of adult straight and gay people, and a dizzying array of homosexual behaviour in animals.
But since gay and lesbian people have fewer children than straight people, a problem arises.
"This is a paradox from an evolutionary perspective," says Paul Vasey from the University of Lethbridge in Canada. "How can a trait like male homosexuality, which has a genetic component, persist over evolutionary time if the individuals that carry the genes associated with that trait are not reproducing?"
Scientists don't know the answer to this Darwinian puzzle, but there are several theories. It's possible that different mechanisms may be at work in different people. Most of the theories relate to research on male homosexuality. The evolution of lesbianism is relatively understudied - it may work in a similar way or be completely different.
The genes that code for homosexuality do other things too
The allele - or group of genes - that sometimes codes for homosexual orientation may at other times have a strong reproductive benefit. This would compensate for gay people's lack of reproduction and ensure the continuation of the trait, as non-gay carriers of the gene pass it down.
There are two or more ways this might happen. One possibility is that the allele confers a psychological trait that makes straight men more attractive to women, or straight women more attractive to men. "We know that women tend to like more feminine behavioural features and facial features in their men, and that might be associated with things like good parenting skills or greater empathy," says Qazi Rahman, co-author of Born Gay; The Psychobiology of Sex Orientation. Therefore, the theory goes, a low "dose" of these alleles enhances the carrier's chances of reproductive success. Every now and then a family member receives a larger dose that affects his or her sexual orientation, but the allele still has an overall reproductive advantage.
Another way a "gay allele" might be able to compensate for a reproductive deficit is by having the converse effect in the opposite sex. For example, an allele which makes the bearer attracted to men has an obvious reproductive advantage to women. If it appears in a man's genetic code it will code for same-sex attraction, but so long as this happens rarely the allele still has a net evolutionary benefit.
There is some evidence for this second theory. Andrea Camperio-Ciani, at the University of Padova in Italy, found that maternal female relatives of gay men have more children than maternal female relatives of straight men. The implication is that there is an unknown mechanism in the X chromosome of men's genetic code which helps women in the family have more babies, but can lead to homosexuality in men. These results haven't been replicated in some ethnic groups - but that doesn't mean they are wrong with regards to the Italian population in Camperio-Ciani's study.
Gay people were 'helpers in the nest'
Some researchers believe that to understand the evolution of gay people, we need to look at how they fit into the wider culture.
Paul Vasey's research in Samoa has focused on a theory called kin selection or the "helper in the nest" hypothesis. The idea is that gay people compensate for their lack of children by promoting the reproductive fitness of brothers or sisters, contributing money or performing other uncle-like activities such as babysitting or tutoring. Some of the gay person's genetic code is shared with nieces and nephews and so, the theory goes, the genes which code for sexual orientation still get passed down.
Sceptics have pointed out that since on average people share just 25% of their genetic code with these relatives, they would need to compensate for every child they don't have themselves with two nieces or nephews that wouldn't otherwise have existed. Vasey hasn't yet measured just how much having a homosexual orientation boosts siblings' reproduction rate, but he has established that in Samoa "gay" men spend more time on uncle-like activities than "straight" men.
"No-one was more surprised than me," says Vasey about his findings. His lab had previously shown that gay men in Japan were no more attentive or generous towards their nieces and nephews than straight, childless men and women. The same result has been found in the UK, US and Canada.
Vasey believes that his Samoan result was different because the men he studied there were different. He studied the fa'afafine, who identify as a third gender, dressing as women and having sex with men who regard themselves as "straight". They are a transgender group who do not like to be called "gay" or "homosexual".
Vasey speculates that part of the reason the fa'afafine are more attentive to their nephews and nieces is their acceptance in Samoan culture compared to gay men in the West and Japan ("You can't help your kin if they've rejected you"). But he also believes that there is something about the fa'afafine way of life that means they are more likely to be nurturing towards nieces and nephews, and speculates that he would find similar results in other "third gender" groups around the world.
If this is true, then the helper in the nest theory may partly explain how a genetic trait for same-sex attraction hasn't been selected away. That hypothesis has led Vasey to speculate that the gay men who identify as men and have masculine traits - that is to say, most gay men in the West - are descended from men who had a cross-gendered sexuality.
Gay people do have children
In the US, around 37% of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual people have a child, about 60% of which are biological. According to the Williams Institute, gay couples that have children have an average of two.
These figures may not be high enough to sustain genetic traits specific to this group, but the evolutionary biologist Jeremy Yoder points out in a blog post that for much of modern history gay people haven't been living openly gay lives. Compelled by society to enter marriages and have children, their reproduction rates may have been higher than they are now.
How many gay people have children also depends on how you define being "gay". Many of the "straight" men who have sex with fa'afafine in Samoa go on to get married and have children.
"The category of same-sex sexuality becomes very diffuse when you take a multicultural perspective," says Joan Roughgarden, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Hawaii. "If you go to India, you'll find that if someone says they are 'gay' or 'homosexual' then that immediately identifies them as Western. But that doesn't mean there's no homosexuality there."
Similarly in the West, there is evidence that many people go through a phase of homosexual activity. In the 1940s, US sex researcher Alfred Kinsey found that while just 4% of white men were exclusively gay after adolescence, 10% had a three-year period of gay activity and 37% had gay sex at some point in their lives.
A national survey of sexual attitudes in the UK last year came up with lower figures. Some 16% of women said they had had a sexual experience with another woman (8% had genital contact), and 7% of men said they had had a sexual experience with a man (with 5% having genital contact).
But most scientists researching gay evolution are interested in an ongoing, internal pattern of desire rather than whether people identify as gay or straight or how often people have gay sex. "Sexual identity and sexual behaviours are not good measures of sexual orientation," says Paul Vasey. "Sexual feelings are."
It's not all in the DNA
Qazi Rahman says that alleles coding for same sex attraction only explain some of the variety in human sexuality. Other, naturally varying biological factors come into play, with about one in seven gay men, he says, owing their sexuality to the "big brother effect".
This has nothing to do with George Orwell, but describes the observation that boys with older brothers are significantly more likely to become gay - with every older brother the chance of homosexuality increases by about a third. No-one knows why this is, but one theory is that with each male pregnancy, a woman's body forms an immune reaction to proteins that have a role in the development of the male brain. Since this only comes into play after several siblings have been born - most of whom are heterosexual and go on to have children - this pre-natal quirk hasn't been selected away by evolution.
Exposure to unusual levels of hormone before birth can also affect sexuality. For example, female foetuses exposed to higher levels of testosterone before birth show higher rates of lesbianism later on. Studies show that "butch" lesbian women and men have a smaller difference in length between their index and ring fingers - a marker of pre-natal exposure to testosterone. In "femme" lesbians the difference has been found to be less marked.
Brothers of a different kind - identical twins - also pose a tricky question. Research has found that if an identical twin is gay, there is about a 20% chance that the sibling will have the same sexual orientation. While that's a greater likelihood than random, it's lower than you might expect for two people with the same genetic code.
William Rice, from the University of California Santa Barbara, says that it may be possible to explain this by looking not at our genetic code but at the way it is processed. Rice and his colleagues refer to the emerging field of epigenetics, which studies the "epimarks" that decide which parts of our DNA get switched on or off. Epimarks get passed on to children, but only sometimes. Rice believes that female foetuses employ an epimark that makes them less sensitive to testosterone. Usually it's not inherited, but occasionally it is, leading to same-sex preference in boys.
Dr William Byne, editor-in-chief of the journal LGBT Health, believes sexuality may well be inborn, but thinks it could be more complicated than some scientists believe. He notes that the heritability of homosexuality is similar to that for divorce, but "social science researchers have not… searched for 'divorce genes'. Instead they have focused on heritable personality and temperamental traits that might influence the likelihood of divorce."
For Qazi Rahman, it's the media that oversimplifies genetic theories of sexuality, with their reports of the discovery of "the gay gene". He believes that sexuality involves tens or perhaps hundreds of alleles that will probably take decades to uncover. And even if heterosexual sex is more advantageous in evolutionary terms than gay sex, it's not only gay people whose sexuality is determined by their genes, he says, but straight people too.
Qazi Rahman appeared on the Why Factor on the BBC World Service. Listen again to the programme on iPlayer or get the Why Factor podcast.
Follow @BBCNewsMagazine on Twitter and on Facebook
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Parents alleging the wrongful disposal of baby ashes in Aberdeen are taking legal action against the city council at the Court of Session. | BBC Scotland revealed last year that no ashes had been offered to the families of infants cremated at Hazlehead Crematorium over a five-year period.
The council found no wrongdoing.
Lindsay Bruce, of Thompsons Solicitors, said a number of parents had been left with no alternative other than to pursue matters through the courts.
An Aberdeen City Council spokesman said: "As these claims are now subject to court proceedings it would be inappropriate to comment."
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Peter lost his ability to speak after a stroke four years ago, at the age of 73. But earlier this year he woke up one morning and suddenly he could speak again. Soon afterwards he discovered he'd had another stroke. Could the second stroke have returned his speech? | By Elaine ChongBBC Stories
The day that Peter regained his speech, he was on holiday in Devon with his family.
"I woke up as usual. Carol was on the other side of the bed. I stood up and spoke to her, but it didn't feel weird. It felt like I was talking to my wife - like the most natural thing to do.
"I kept talking to her, and her mouth just dropped open. She said, 'Pete, you're speaking!'"
"I was going: 'Come on! Don't stop! Don't stop! Don't stop because it might go away again. Keep going, keep going!'" remembers Carol.
Their son, Jonathan, who was in the next room, heard two people having a conversation and came rushing in. "What's going on, Mum?" he said. "I thought your voice had dropped! Who is that deep voice?"
"I said, 'It's your father speaking!'" says Carol. "We all started crying and laughing at the same time. It was very emotional because it had been so long."
It was such a shock, nobody can remember what Peter's first words in four years were.
"Carol wasn't interested in what I said, she was more interested in the fact that I was talking," says Peter.
Find out more
They all went out to celebrate, but Carol soon noticed that the left-hand side of Peter's mouth was drooping. Later in the day he complained of weakness in his legs - he had difficulty walking, and his son Jonathan had to hold him up.
They took a taxi to the nearest hospital where a scan suggested he'd had another stroke. Fortunately, however, the negative effects were only temporary. Peter's mouth stopped drooping and his legs returned to normal. And months later, he's still talking.
The couple are convinced that this second stroke somehow "dislodged" something in Peter's brain - something that had stopped him talking after the first stroke.
However, Alex Leff, a professor of cognitive neurology and an expert in the recovery of language after stroke and brain injury, offers little support for this theory. He says you can think of the brain as a network, and of a stroke as an event that "takes out" some of the language nodes. In many cases, patients "reroute some of the language functions using what is remaining in the brain", he says - but when they have had severe language problems, like Peter, this tends to be a slow process, not a sudden one.
The case is "certainly very unusual", he says.
Aphasia
Sources: National Aphasia Association, NHS
Carol was with Peter when he had his first stroke. They had been out, but Peter hadn't been feeling well, so Carol was driving them back to their Gloucestershire home.
"I asked him for the time and he didn't answer me," says Carol. "I asked him again. I just sensed that something was wrong. When you live with somebody and have been married 52 years you know everything, don't you?"
Afterwards, over a period of weeks, Peter gradually felt his ability to speak fade away.
"I found it more and more difficult to have a proper conversation," he says. "Words were difficult to find, I couldn't get any flow to sentences. The words were coming out staccato-like.
"In the end it felt almost impossible to speak. I could only say 'Yes' and 'No' and occasionally a very short phrase. That was the best I could do."
Carol found it heartbreaking to see her husband, a retired engineer who she describes as a "clever and eloquent man", unable to speak. The whole family shared her distress.
Their daughter, Jane, admitted to her mother, "I really miss Dad."
Carol told her, "Well, he's not dead, he's not gone away. It's awful for us, but it's dreadful for him - and that's what you've got to remember."
Despite being unable to form words, Peter says that he was always able to understand everyone's conversation.
"I always knew exactly what was going on around me, so I was completely aware - but being unable to converse with people is the worst," he says.
The couple perfected a system to communicate with each other. Carol would ask yes/no questions and Peter would respond with a thumbs-up or thumbs-down gesture. He also carried round a pencil and pad, writing down what he wanted to say.
"We got by very well," he says.
"We made light of it," Carol adds. "Well, we've got to carry on, we're getting old. You expect something to happen."
Peter has a strong interest in photography, so if they went to a camera shop and he wanted to ask a technical question he would write it down in advance.
Sometimes Carol would explain the need for this unusual form of communication.
"I would tell them, 'My husband's had a stroke. He can't speak so he's written down a question for you.'"
During his silent years Peter would often spend the day reading or working on mathematical modelling. Carol remembers that he was always scribbling algorithms and equations in notebooks. "It kept him quite busy actually."
Peter says the relief of being able to speak again is overwhelming. He gets tearful about it.
"Being able to communicate with other people is almost all of being a human being," he says. "When that goes, it's a big part of you gone and my family felt that I had sort of disappeared. You can't really convey emotion with 'Yes' and 'No'."
They tried to include him in the conversation, and make him laugh, but it wasn't the same, he says.
The most challenging part was listening to people say things that he didn't agree with.
"I found it particularly frustrating when people were arguing about something and I couldn't respond in the conversation - it was like losing every argument," Peter says.
"It's nice to be able to argue again and make myself a nuisance."
His first big debate was about Brexit with friends. "They said to me, 'Oh, I'm glad you're back!'"
Carol chips in: "Oh he loves an argument, he could argue with an empty room."
Peter's speech is near-perfect now, apart from some slurring when he gets tired in the evenings. But everyone has remarked on how his accent has changed.
"People say that I am speaking a bit posh now," he says.
"I tell them that I'd always been a bit posh really, but I'd tried to hide it from them."
Banter and friendly bickering is clearly a big part of Peter's relationship with Carol.
She admits that she got so used to speaking for him that she's now having to adapt to him piping up again.
"It's a habit," she says. "When we were at the hospital I kept talking for him. I've got to learn to shut up and button it. I have had a bit of a monopoly the past few years."
On the day he could suddenly speak again, Peter looked pointedly at the nurse and said, "I think Carol is going to regret this."
"At times, I do," she admits. "I told you to be quiet the other day, you've done nothing but natter."
But both of them worry he may lose his new-found ability again.
"It's such a delicately balanced thing," says Peter, ever the engineer.
"It's like a watch that's been knocked with a hammer and come back, and it could have another knock and go away - like a bad contact."
Peter asked that the BBC not use his full name.
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Read: 'I woke up and didn't recognise my wife'
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The BBC Technology index has been writing about makers, hackers and other assorted tinkerers for over a year. Time, then, to see if any of the skills and crafts we have filmed and written about have rubbed off.
| All we needed was a project.
As if on cue, an e-mail fell into the inbox from Allegra Hawksmoor who told us about a band called The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing. One track of their next album, called Now That's What I Call Steampunk - Volume One, will be available on a wax cylinder. The CD album and single wax cylinder track will be available from 1 June.
"As far as we're aware, it's the first album to be sold with (at least a partial) wax cylinder release for the best part of a century," she said.
Anyone buying one of the 40 copies of the track on wax will also get instructions for building a phonograph to play the cylinder.
Would we be interested in finding out more, she asked?
Yes, we said, we would. Just try stopping us.
The idea to put one track on a wax cylinder came from band member Andy Heintz.
"The second I heard him say it, I knew we had to do it," said Ms Hawksmoor. However, she added, she had no idea whether it was even possible.
The internet helped Ms Hawksmoor find Adrian Tuddenham of Poppy Records, one of the few souls in the land that can put digital recordings onto wax cylinders.
Finding Mr Tuddenham solved one problem. The other, bigger, task was to draw up plans for a home-brew phonograph that would cost about £20 to make.
But she already knew someone who could help with that.
Professor Offlogic, aka Sam Kimery, is a veteran maker. "Making things has always been a necessity for me," he told the BBC.
"Nobody made good Star Trek props, or toy Geiger counters or any of the neat stuff I wanted to play with," he said. "This led, naturally, to blowing stuff up with a chemistry set, which led to electricity (hey, some of those exploding things needed a remote trigger) and general inventing and tinkering with things."
He adds: "If you don't want what everyone else wants you have to make your own, the market just doesn't serve you very well if you are at all strange."
This led him to a career in hi-tech and a lifelong interest in making stuff. As a result creating a phonograph from scratch was no stretch, even though he had never actually done it before.
"I remember playing an Andy Williams LP using a paper cone and sewing needle as a kid," he said. "That's about as close as I got to this project before."
The Prof sent along the plans and we set about getting all the parts together. We scoured DIY shops, craft stores, hobby shops and the cookery aisles of lots of supermarkets. Some bits were easier to find than others. Inspiration struck when we found a cone-shaped metal measuring jug that became our sound horn.
The internet helped with other parts, particularly the little motors and pulleys needed to get the cylinder turning.
Once we had the bits piled up, the work started. At that point we handed over to Jason Palmer who, as a doctor of physical chemistry, has far more experience with building stuff than anyone else. He takes up the story.
Tinker time
It is the simplest mechanical means to record and reproduce sound - hence the rich history stretching back to one of history's great inventors.
But how about making one, today, with bits you can easily get your hands on? In principle, it's easy, but we were provided nothing more than a schematic with no dimensions, so some careful planning and improvisation were both required through the day.
We had our greatest trouble getting a smooth movement of the cylinder.
Partly that was down to getting the O-ringed motor shaft centred and stable between the rails on which the cylinder sat. But more than that, the trouble was the sliding friction against those rails.
From a design point of view, there are no constraints on these, so take the time to find the right rails and ideally some bearings that they can turn in, or bearings that fit on the rails themselves and can be fitted with O-rings.
Our attempts with O-ringed plastic wheels and then with plain rubber grommets were woefully inadequate to keep the cylinder from bouncing all over the shop.
One thing to keep in mind throughout is the tiny size of your signal.
Even if mechanically everything turns and moves as it should, the phonograph needs to carry a minuscule vibration from the stylus through to a resonator and then out a tube and into a horn.
Every connection is another place where sound can effectively be lost, so aim for the shortest path between needle and ear, trying to mechanically isolate anything that's carrying sound.
Our first stylus, a carefully cut section of aluminium can, served more to scratch the cylinder than play anything from it; in the end we fitted the player with a length of wire that did the job far better.
Sound lessons
So, we did it and got it working, after a fashion. Even if it took Poppy Records to help refine the design and improve the sound output.
But as has often been said of anything that is hand-made, be it a work of art, a tiled bathroom or a phonograph built from bits; these things are never finished, they are more or less abandoned.
Why? Because you know the corners that were cut when the work was being done; the unfinished parts that are obvious to you and no-one else; and all those ideas you had about improving it while making it are clamouring for attention. Even if it works, and works well, you know it could work better.
Despite that, there is comfort in knowing that being a hacker or a maker is a journey not a destination, and that no matter how high the shoulders you stand on, you'll never see over the horizon. It is consoling to realise that you, at least, have raised your eyes to the sky and are looking in the right direction.
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There's a big problem facing members of Parliament who want to avoid a no-deal Brexit. They can't just show there is a majority in the House of Commons against no deal - they need to prove there is a majority in favour of an alternative outcome. | By Chris MorrisReality Check correspondent, BBC News
That's because leaving the EU - with or without a deal - is currently the default.
If the prime minister fails to get a deal through the House of Commons, the UK will leave with no deal at all unless something changes, because leaving the EU is written into UK law.
The EU Withdrawal Act sets 29 March as the date of departure.
The wording of the act does allow a minister to change the definition of "exit day" relatively quickly using a statutory instrument - a piece of secondary legislation - rather than an entirely new act of Parliament that would need to be debated. A minister would have to propose the change and MPs would have to approve it.
Article 50
But there is a second and more significant reason why no deal would become the default position: that's what EU law says.
Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty is the formal route for any country leaving the EU and it allows for a two-year process of negotiation. At the end of that period "the treaties shall cease to apply to the state in question" unless Article 50 is extended or revoked.
The most obvious way therefore to stop a no-deal Brexit, or any form of Brexit, is to revoke Article 50.
The European Court of Justice has ruled the UK can do that on its own, without asking the other 27 countries, and stay a member of the EU on its current terms - including opting-out of key policies, and keeping the budget rebate.
But it seems highly unlikely that the House of Commons would vote to revoke Article 50 unless there had been another referendum, or maybe an election, in which the public backed the UK remaining in the EU.
The government rejects the idea of holding another referendum anyway - and the time to do so before the end of March has run out.
Extending Article 50
So, the other way to avoid a no-deal Brexit in the short term is to play for time and extend the Article 50 period. The government would need to propose that and MPs would have to approve it.
But, crucially, unlike in the case of revoking Article 50, to extend it the UK would also need the agreement of all 27 other EU countries.
It would probably need to persuade them that something important had changed in UK politics to warrant an extension - perhaps a looming election, or another referendum, rather than more of the same argument.
One of the constraints for the rest of the EU is that European elections will take place at the end of May and the new European Parliament (without UK MEPs if Brexit has taken place) is due to meet for the first time in July.
The only other circumstance in which a brief extension to Article 50 would probably be approved by the EU is if there had been a vote in favour of Theresa May's deal but a little more time was needed to dot the "i"s and cross the "t"s.
But if Article 50 was extended without a deal passing the House of Commons, no deal would still remain the default outcome at the end of the extended negotiating period.
So what else can MPs do for now?
In a word, amendments.
An amendment to the Finance Bill, limiting the Treasury's ability to make no-deal preparations unless authorised by Parliament, was backed by MPs by 303 to 296 votes.
This amendment will make it "harder for the government to drift into no deal without Parliament being able to direct it", according to Labour MP Yvette Cooper.
A cross-party coalition of MPs against no deal is now flexing its muscles, and what we're likely to see over the next couple of months is what some are calling "guerrilla warfare by amendment" in the House of Commons.
The trade bill is likely to be another target - it would be needed in the event of no deal, to try to keep the UK trading on the same terms as it has now with the rest of the world.
The idea behind all this parliamentary manoeuvring is to demonstrate that there is a clear majority in the House of Commons against no deal.
But none of it, taken in isolation, will prevent the Article 50 clock ticking away until it stops at the end of March.
'Indicative votes'
That's why a growing number of MPs support the idea of holding a series of "indicative votes" on different potential outcomes, to try to find an alternative to no deal that would enjoy broad (or even sufficient) support.
Senior MPs argue that the government would be unable to ignore the political pressure if the will of the House of Commons was clearly expressed on numerous occasions. But political pressure is not the same as legal reality.
Three ministers have said publicly they would resign if the government pursued a no-deal strategy, while others are thought to hold the same position in private. A handful of backbench MPs have said they would quit the party.
The Work and Pensions Secretary, Amber Rudd, is understood to have told cabinet that history would take a dim view of the government if it accepted no deal and it would leave the UK a less safe country.
But if the prime minister did decide to press on regardless, it may well be that the only way MPs could stop a no-deal Brexit at the last moment would be to vote down the government itself.
UPDATE - This article was updated on Wednesday 9 Jan to include the new amendment asking government to return to Parliament with new plans within three days of a vote against the Prime Minister's withdrawal deal.
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A man has been charged with murder after another man was stabbed to death in north London. | Nathaniel De Sousa-Roper, 37, was found at a property in Macleod Road in Enfield, late on Friday afternoon. Paramedics carried out first aid but he died at the scene.
Joshua Gabbana, 24, has been charged with his murder following an investigation by homicide detectives.
He will appear before Highbury Corner magistrates on Monday.
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Over the past decade, bold and costly new art galleries have sprung up in towns from Margate to Middlesbrough in the hope of regenerating underloved areas and bringing modern art to the masses. Has the strategy worked? | By Ian YoungsArts reporter, BBC News
Ten years ago on Friday, an old flour mill on the banks of the River Tyne was reborn as a temple to modern art when Gateshead's Baltic gallery opened its doors.
The £46m Baltic and its neighbour the Sage, a futuristic Norman Foster-designed concert hall, have become city landmarks.
But as well as cultural venues, they are monuments to the metamorphoses cities like Newcastle and Gateshead have gone through since the steam and soot of heavy industry subsided.
The Baltic and Sage demonstrate how "cultural investment" can regenerate an area, according to Baltic director Godfrey Worsdale, who points to new hotels, a design centre and college that have sprung up in their shadows.
"Whilst the major cultural venues in Newcastle and Gateshead do demand almost £20m a year from the public purse to operate," he says, "we know that the return into the regional economy is something like £80m.
"So it's a massive injection of resource into the regional economy and that has obviously created very significant numbers of opportunities for the local population."
The Baltic and Sage do not just represent bricks-and-mortar renovation, but have also changed the atmosphere and the way people feel about the city, he believes.
The Baltic attracts about 400,000 visits per year, including a dedicated audience of 80,000 who now come to every exhibition.
It was among the new British galleries that followed in the wake of the Guggenheim in Bilbao, Spain, which reinvented the former port city when it opened in 1997.
The "Bilbao effect" was then chased by the Nottingham Contemporary, the Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art (Mima), the Towner in Eastbourne, the Public in West Bromwich, the Turner Contemporary in Margate, the Hepworth Wakefield and Firstsite in Colchester. Between them, they cost £195m to build.
In Middlesbrough, Mima celebrated its fifth birthday in January and the striking building was intended to provide a focal point for the central square.
But, surrounded by uniformly ugly office blocks, a row of empty shop units and a couple of Georgian council buildings, the glass-fronted gallery could have been beamed in from another planet.
Mima has earned a good reputation in the art world but costs £1m a year to the council, which is having its budget cut by £50m over the next four years.
In 2010, the town was ranked as the least able place in the country to cope with economic shocks like public sector cuts.
The local jury seems to still be considering its verdict on whether the gallery has been a good thing.
When asked whether it has made Middlesbrough a more desirable place to live, a lady in a local estate agent answers: "It's neither here nor there.
"I suppose it's something nice to look at in the middle of this mess." She declined to be identified.
Lots of people in the town centre look blankly when asked what impact Mima has made and say modern art is not their cup of tea.
A newspaper seller called Alan declares it "a waste of money", adding: "They could spend however much millions of pounds on maybe getting something for the kids. Like the swimming baths that used to be in Middlesbrough."
The only indication of the gallery's knock-on effect on the nearby row of empty shops is a sign for a pop-up "art and performance space" called We Are Open, which is decidedly not.
But there are other, subtle changes. "There's an element of town pride that goes along with having something that isn't Middlesbrough, known for the smoke, the pollution, the general urban decay," says Chris Neale, a bank worker on his lunch break in the square.
And at the railway station, a smaller gallery space called Platform A has been open for a year alongside studios for 15 artists.
Artist and founder Tony Charles says Mima's arrival made others realise that the council was receptive to creative ideas. It has also given the university's fine art graduates a reason to stick around.
"Since we've become established here, we can see other people following our example and starting to set things up themselves," he says. "It all contributes to the creative maturing process of Middlesbrough.
"Now, it's not unusual to be talking to an artist in Middlesbrough in the middle of the street. There are plenty of them. Whereas years ago, before Mima, they were a rare breed."
Two of the most recent additions to the gallery circuit are the Hepworth Wakefield and Turner Contemporary in Margate, both designed by David Chipperfield, which each boasted 500,000 visitors in their first years - far exceeding expectations.
But are those visitors also spending time and money in the area, or just visiting the galleries before going straight home?
In Wakefield, the gallery estimates that its visitors each spent an average of £20 in the town, bringing in £10m to the local economy.
Wakefield Express editor Mark Bradley says opinion in the city is still not "unequivocally positive", but that the gallery has won over many critics.
"I've been into various shops in Wakey - sandwich shops, coffee shops, places like that - where they've said that they have had people that aren't from Wakefield discussing their visit to the Hepworth.
"At the outset, there were a lot of people saying 'People are just going to go to the Hepworth and then leave Wakefield'. But I don't believe that's true. I think a lot of people are sticking around a bit."
High-profile galleries may offer a "very quick visible fix" for councils looking to address problems, according to Professor Malcolm Miles of the University of Plymouth, but they cannot make much difference on their own.
There must be other attractions to draw in visitors, and other forms of regeneration to really improve an area, he believes. The New Art Gallery in Walsall, which opened in 2000, is one that struggled in its early years.
"The time I went there, I was the only visitor for quite a long period," Professor Miles says. "The building really stands out in the environment around it as the only element of regeneration there. It's too isolated.
"And it's so near Birmingham, which has a lot more. People will go into Birmingham and not Walsall. Which is a pity because there were a lot of positive aspects about the building and what's inside it. These are well intentioned initiatives but they're sometimes rather naive."
New Art Gallery director Stephen Snoddy says the venue had 175,000 visitors in 2011 and that new flats, shops and a hotel had now been built nearby.
The new galleries have certainly loosened London's monopoly on contemporary art.
Funding from councils and other sources is being squeezed, though, and Arts Council England has decided to focus capital money on improving existing buildings rather than putting up new ones.
The galleries from Wakefield to Margate are among the last of their generation, and must now prove their worth in the long run, just as the Baltic appears to be doing.
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Right in the centre of the tiny farming village of Beigaoli, in eastern China's Shandong province, lies a cheery local kindergarten. Most of the village children attend classes here every day for free, singing songs and making use of the outdoor swing set. | By Celia HattonBBC News, Beijing
But the parents of one three-year-old had to bribe the kindergarten's teachers to allow him to attend.
Zhang Rundong is a little boy with big eyes and a serious expression, standing on the edge of the noisy group of children. He is the Zhang family's illegal second son, born in violation of the country's one-child policy.
In retaliation for the boy's birth, officials are withholding his identity papers. Without them, he cannot access healthcare or free education, travel within his country or even use a library.
This month, China's one-child policy was relaxed, allowing some couples to have two children. But nothing has changed for an estimated 10-20 million children already born in violation of the original policy.
In their simple home, the Zhangs detailed their ongoing battle with the local officials, starting with the failure of Mrs Zhang's government-mandated birth control.
"I was scared when I found out I was pregnant again," she said. "Of course, I was a little bit happy too. So I didn't want the other villagers to find out and force me to abort the baby."
Following their son's secret birth, the couple borrowed from friends and relatives to pay a fine totalling almost $10,000 (£6,100). Across China, more than $3.3bn in similar fines were paid by families in the year 2012 alone - though it is unclear where that money ends up. Critics believe the fines are used as extra income for local governments.
The Zhangs showed the BBC receipts from the payment of their fines from the local Communist officials, but they did not appear to be official government documents. Instead, the receipts were handwritten on small slips of paper, illustrating the arbitrary nature of the party's punishment system.
In some parts of China, those who violate the one-child policy pay a fine, which they can sometimes reduce after negotiating with local officials before receiving their child's identity papers. Others, like the Zhangs, are not so lucky.
The family's fine has been paid, but that is still not enough for local officials.
Secret audio recordings, they allege, reveal the Beigaoli village party chief's additional demands: Mrs Zhang must also be sterilised.
The couple do not want any more children, but they are refusing the procedure, arguing that it violates their basic rights.
"Many women have been sterilised by force," Mrs Zhang explains. "We are scared officials will detain me and make me have the operation if my husband leaves the house."
The BBC crew visited the village's family planning office, but no one was available to speak to us. Repeated interview requests were ignored.
'I will appeal'
Almost 500km (310 miles) to the north of Beigaoli, another mother is also demanding answers.
On the northern outskirts of Beijing, Liu Fei is also fighting local officials in her area to relinquish her son's identity papers. Her eight-year-old does not even have a birth certificate, although for now, Ms Liu has found a school that will allow him to attend classes.
Liu Fei received an unusually harsh punishment after having her second child in her second marriage. Because her second husband also had one child, the government is treating Ms Liu as if she has had three children of her own. She faces a $54,000 fine that is 14 times her annual salary as a warehouse worker.
"I'll never be able to pay it off in this lifetime," Liu Fei told the BBC, before bursting into tears.
So this widow is suing the local authorities - something that is almost unheard of in China.
"If no specific government law denies my son an identity before I pay the fine, he should receive one," she explains. "If they don't give him that, I will appeal."
Ms Liu and her lawyer believe it is illegal for the Beijing government to deny a child's identity papers until the one-child policy fine has been paid. The Beijing court is expected to issue its decision on the case within the next week.
It is a case that could set a precedent for millions in the same situation, though most agree there is little hope the Liu family will win; little promise that this boy's legal right to exist will be separated from his mother's battles with the government.
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The mother of a British woman found guilty of lying about being gang-raped in Cyprus has told the BBC they will be "relentless in the pursuit of justice", as they appeal against her conviction. | The teenager was given a four-month sentence, suspended for three years.
Her lawyer said he "expected a full hearing before the [Cypriot] Supreme Court" from May onwards.
He said her initial statement admitting guilt had been taken "in breach of both EU and European Human Rights Law".
'Pressure and coercion'
Speaking to the BBC's Victoria Derbyshire programme, the woman's mother said: "The issues in this case are of such monumental importance for sexually assaulted women around the world that we will be relentless in the pursuit of justice."
She added that her daughter was "doing well and has blended back into society" since she returned to the UK after being handed her sentence in January.
The woman - whom the BBC is not naming - was put on trial and convicted in December after recanting a claim that she had been raped by a group of 12 young men in a hotel room in Ayia Napa in July 2019.
She said Cypriot police had made her falsely confess to lying about the incident - something police have denied.
Her lawyer, Lewis Power QC, told the Victoria Derbyshire programme "the fight to clear her name forges ahead in earnest".
"She maintains that she was brutally raped but was forced to change her account under pressure and coercion from the Cypriot Police."
He said her "confession" had been taken "without access to a lawyer" and "under immense pressure" after hours of questioning.
"We will also be highlighting a number of key issues such as the District Court's refusal to hear evidence which supported the teenager's account, and also the very conduct of the trial and the arguable differential treatment between the defence and the prosecution.
"Additionally, the court's apparent disregarding of the array of expert evidence put forward by the defence was a surprising feature of this case, and we hope that when the appeal court views this case as a whole they will come to the view that the young girl was not afforded a fair trial."
Shami Chakrabarti, Labour's Shadow Attorney General, told the BBC: "This shocking case raises many unanswered questions of both Cyprus and UK governments.
"Did the Cypriot police contact the British High Commission before the young woman was questioned or pressured about her complaint for eight hours? Was she offered any consular support? If not, why not?"
'A second chance'
During the sentencing in January, judge Michalis Papathanasiou told the teenager he was giving her a "second chance" by suspending her sentence - allowing her to fly back to the UK.
He said the woman's "psychological state, her youth, that she has been away from her family, her friends and academic studies this year", had led him to the decision.
At the time, Boris Johnson's spokesman said the UK prime minister was "pleased" she could now return home.
However, Downing Street said the UK government had highlighted its "concerns about the judicial process in this case and the woman's right to a fair trial" to the Cypriot authorities.
The 12 men whom the woman alleges raped her were arrested but later freed, and returned home after she retracted her claims.
Israeli lawyer Nir Islovich, who represented four of the 12 men in the case, welcomed the decision to convict the woman.
"What was important to us was that she would be convicted of the charges brought against her," he said at the time.
"That happened with full adoption of the facts as presented by my clients."
Follow the BBC's Victoria Derbyshire programme on Facebook and Twitter - and see more of its stories here.
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A company in Powys has won a five-year contract with Merthyr Tydfil council to operate and manage recycling centres in Aberfan and Dowlais.
| Potter Group, based at Welshpool, already operates household waste recycling centres in Welshpool, Newtown and Machynlleth on behalf of Powys council.
It also runs commercial waste transfer stations in Brecon and Welshpool.
The firm said eight jobs had been safeguarded in Aberfan and Dowlais.
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The haunting beauty of Syria's so-called Dead Cities, once seen, is never forgotten. Here on the wild and magical hills of the north-west nestles the world's richest repository of 4th, 5th and 6th Century churches - over 2,000, spread among hundreds of early Byzantine settlements. | By Diana DarkeAuthor on Middle East culture
Together, they represent the transition from Roman paganism to the zeal of early Christianity, providing unique evidence in stone of the influence of Syrian styles on the subsequent evolution of European Romanesque and Gothic religious architecture.
But today, like the three million souls currently kettled in Idlib province, they are endangered and largely forgotten. Bygone inhabitants grew prosperous from production of olive oil and wine, as their stone presses testify. Today's cash crop is cigarette tobacco - lifeblood of the war which has been raging since 2011.
Ironically, Syria's tourism ministry rebranded the ruins The Forgotten Cities before the war, imagining high-end walking tours for romantically-minded visitors.
So forgotten were they, that the UN's cultural agency Unesco only recognised as them as a World Heritage Site in June 2011, calling them Ancient Villages of Northern Syria.
'Heart of the Almond'
Confusion over what to call them remains, but beyond doubt is their astonishing state of preservation.
The ancestor of France's beloved Notre-Dame Cathedral still stands on a remote hilltop in rebel-held Idlib, its familiar twin-towered facade flanking a monumental entrance.
Crafted from local limestone around AD460, it has survived wars, earthquakes and centuries of use as a playground for village children, never requiring buttressing in over 1,500 years.
Known as Qalb Lozeh - literally Heart of the Almond (or, crème de la crème) - its flamboyant doorway was designed to welcome eager pilgrims en route to hear the eccentric St Simeon preach from his pillar, a day's walk north-east.
In the valley below, today's Qalb Lozeh villagers would have heard the explosions from Barisha on 27 October 2019, when the head of the Islamic State (IS) group, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, died in a raid by US special forces.
Idlib's rugged karst geography makes it natural guerrilla territory, with perfect caves for rebel hideouts.
Hermits too have long sought refuge in these caves. St Simeon Stylites, son a local farmer, was the most celebrated hermit of his day, moving from a cave to a pillar ("stylos" in Greek) to escape the crowds who pursued him.
When he died in 459 after living 36 years on top of his pillar, the Byzantine emperor ordered the construction of four basilicas and a walk-in baptistery to mark the spot.
The resulting St Simeon's Basilica complex, completed in 490, was the Santiago de Compostela of its day, the first centred church beneath a dome, not surpassed in all of Christendom till Hagia Sophia in 537. Its curved apse (or chevet) and the finely sculpted ornamentation on its lintels, arches, mouldings and facades herald the many subsequent architectural refinements of Constantinople and Europe.
The magnificent complex was badly damaged in May 2016 by Russian air strikes, carried out in support of the Syrian government against rebels, blowing what remained of St Simeon's pillar to pieces. Today the raised hilltop is the site of a Turkish observation post, set up as part of a deal to "de-escalate" the fighting.
Abandoned to their fate
Alas, one development at least eluded the observers: on 17 December 2019 the disappearance was reported from Ain Dara, an unusual neo-Hittite temple just north of St Simeon's, of a giant basalt lion, guardian of the site for 3,000 years.
Now feared smuggled across the Turkish border, it represented Mesopotamian fertility goddess Ishtar, popularised through Agatha Christie's Curse of Ishtar set in Iraq where Christie, who worked on excavations in northern Syria with her archaeologist husband Max Mallowan, helped save ancient treasures under threat.
In January 2018 the temple was 60% destroyed by Turkish air force bombing, part of an operation to drive from Afrin Kurdish fighters affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) - a rebel group fighting for Kurdish autonomy in Turkey.
The routine Russian/Syrian bombing of Idlib's schools and hospitals barely makes the headlines these days. Neither does the displacement of thousands of its poverty-stricken civilians into cold and muddy olive groves. Idlib's inhabitants and culture are both "Forgotten" and "Dead", abandoned to their fate.
Unmoved by massive loss of life and heritage, hardcore Islamist extremists are digging in for the long haul. Most are not local, but with north-west Syria now home to the world's largest concentration of al-Qaeda-affiliated groups, the next iteration of IS may even now be incubating, soon to emerge from the caves of Idlib, to wreak more damage on Syria's battered people and culture.
Diana Darke is the author of several books on Middle East culture, including My House in Damascus (2016) and Stealing from the Saracens: How Islamic architecture shaped Europe (2020). Follow her on Twitter.
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For 15 years, Irish anthropologist Martina Tyrrell has studied the relationship between humans and animals in Arviat, an Inuit community on the west coast of Hudson Bay, where the townspeople are increasingly having to cope with a large and dangerous visitor - the polar bear. | It's a Sunday afternoon in mid-October. I'm standing near the cemetery at the eastern end of Arviat, with a handful of other people. All eyes are fixed on the newly formed sea ice where a polar bear bellyflops into the sea, hauls itself back on to the broken ice, and bellyflops again.
Inuit men and women, accustomed to close encounters with polar bears, seem to be no less in awe of this creature than I am. There are gasps of delight at the bear's antics, and informed discussion about its age, size and sex - and the reasons why it is behaving like this.
This is the seventh or eighth bear I have seen in as many days. Daily, I join townspeople on the dock near my house. Binoculars are passed around as we watch a mother bear and two yearling cubs on the snowy slope on the far side of the inlet.
I visit the wildlife officer one afternoon and find him at his huge office window, peering out at the sea ice through a telescope.
He stands aside so I can take a look. The same mother and cubs are on the sea ice, closer to town. But they are not alone. As the sub-adult cubs saunter ahead with their distinctive pigeon-toed gait, the mother fights off the advances of a male bear. She repeatedly rises up on her hind legs, showing the male her full size, in an attempt to ward off his advances. Cubs are often killed by male bears, so this mother is defending the lives of her offspring.
One evening, my friend Darlene Gibbons takes me to the town dump in her truck. Along with others in trucks, on snowmobiles and all-terrain vehicles, we suffer the smells of the rubbish and the neighbouring sewage lagoon, in order to watch the polar bears that come scavenging at this time of year.
People and polar bears have always lived side-by-side in this part of the world but in the past it was rare for bears to enter the town. Now, every summer and autumn, it's becoming an uncomfortable part of everyday life.
I first lived in Arviat, a community of 2,500 people in Canada's Nunavut Territory, for 10 months between 2000 and 2001, volunteering at the local school. I returned a year later to carry out a year of research for a PhD in anthropology. Arviat has been central to my professional and personal life ever since, and I go back as often as I can. As an anthropologist, I am drawn to the relationships between Arviarmiut - as the Inuit of Arviat are called - and the beluga whales, seals, caribou, and other animals that share their Arctic home. But it is the relationship between people and polar bears that fascinates me above all else.
Polar bears tower over humans, sometimes measuring as much as 12 feet from nose to tail. But Inuit believe that humans and bears have much in common. When bears rear up on their hind legs to sniff the air, to play, to attack or defend themselves, they resemble two-legged humans. And like Inuit, bears are at home on both sea ice and land. At sea they hunt the same marine mammal species for sustenance - humans and bears are rival predators at the top of the food chain.
For Inuit, these similarities suggest a close relationship. Bears are powerful spiritual beings that, in mythology, interact with everyone from the most powerful shamans to the most defenceless orphans. Arviat elder Johnny Karetak once told me that bear attacks on humans are neither arbitrary nor random. "Bears attack down the family line, like a curse," he said. "The bears would look out for one particular person. They knew him well."
In winter 2007, I spent 16 days at a polar bear hunting camp. The oldest hunter, the Rev Jimmy Muckpah, was 71 years old, a respected elder, Arviat's Anglican minister, and the most experienced polar bear hunter in town. One afternoon, a bear wandered into camp and scavenged some meat that lay on the sea ice. One of the younger hunters, a man in his 30s, began throwing small pebbles. These repeatedly hit the bear on the head, causing it to flinch, but otherwise not distracting it from the meat. Jimmy chastised the younger man for showing disrespect to the animal. Some hours later, when the younger man complained of a headache, Jimmy was not surprised. "You tried to hurt the bear's head," he said. "So the bear has given you a headache."
This illustrates another element of the relationship between Arviarmiut and bears. Encounters with bears are common, but harm to either humans or bears is rare. For the most part, each treats the other with caution.
Arviarmiut meet bears while hunting beluga whales and fishing for Arctic char in summer, while berry picking on the tundra in autumn, and during autumn and winter seal hunting along the shore and on the sea ice. Bears break into hunting cabins (occasionally with sleeping families inside) attracted by the smell of food. Hunters have been attacked in their tents and there have been some close shaves, but it is many years since a human was badly injured by a polar bear in Arviat.
My hunting companions have often put me on bear patrol while they butcher beluga whales, scan the sea for seals or clean fishing nets. It is my job to look out for bears, or to watch the movements of bears already present, and alert my friends if a hasty retreat is called for. The bears we encounter are usually curious rather than aggressive, standing up to sniff the air, and waiting patiently for their turn with the carcass. But vigilance is critical as curiosity can quickly turn to aggression and, over certain terrain, a polar bear can easily outrun the all-terrain vehicles Arviarmiut use in summer and autumn.
Polar bears: Key facts
Source: WWF
Over the past decade, however, encounters have been on the increase. Camping south of the community in summer is no longer safe, and autumn berry picking - an important subsistence activity usually undertaken by women and children - is now fraught with danger. Bears increasingly wander the streets of Arviat, particularly in late autumn.
At this time of year, regular announcements of bear sightings are made on local community FM radio, schools are sometimes closed early and the usually lively streets are eerily quiet. Halloween trick-or-treating, once so wild and fun-filled, has been all but wiped out, for fear of unwanted encounters not with ghosts or demons but with wandering bears.
What is driving this change in the polar bears' behaviour?
Many Arviarmiut blame polar bear tourism in neighbouring Churchill - 250km to the south - for encouraging the animals to look for food in human settlements.
But there are other theories. Some Inuit think the bear population in the region is growing. Many scientists, on the other hand, put the blame on habitat loss - according to this theory it's the desperation of hungry bears facing decreased ice seasons in a rapidly warming Arctic that leads them to approach the town. They have always gathered on the coastline at this time of year, awaiting the formation of the sea ice that is their winter hunting ground, but usually at a greater distance.
Whatever the cause, Arviarmiut have had to get used to sharing their community with growing numbers of large, dangerous and unpredictable carnivores. Many towns in the northern Canadian territory of Nunavut are in the same position - Clyde River, Hall Beach and Resolute Bay have all reported problems in the past couple of years.
In Arviat, things reached a critical point four years ago.
Between 2010 and 2011, 11 polar bears were killed by Arviarmiut defending life or property. So, in 2011, with financial support from WWF (Canada), local hunter Leo Ikakhik was hired as a full-time polar bear monitor. Leo patrols the town, responds to sightings, and discourages polar bears through the use of spotlights and bangers. In addition, many homes have been provided with sealed steel bins for storing frozen meat, which was previously stored on roofs in sub-zero temperatures, and electric fences have been erected around sled dog teams. As a result of these measures, defence kills have all but ceased.
But a number of bears are also killed each year by hunters.
Under the 1973 International Agreement for the Conservation of Polar Bears and their Habitat, hunting quotas were introduced in communities across the Canadian Arctic. Each Inuit community can now hunt a certain number of bears each year.
Prior to this, between six and 12 bears were killed by Arviarmiut each year. Under the quota system, this figure rose to 15 bears per year through the 1980s, 20 in the 1990s, and peaked at 22 bears per year in 2005. For reasons that are as much to do with politics as conservation, since 2005 the quota has rapidly declined - down to three in 2009 and eight in 2014. This has coincided with the increased numbers of bears in the vicinity of the town and many Arviarmiut argue that the protection of bears seems to be taking precedence over the protection of Inuit children.
The quota is distributed by lottery, and the recipients have a 48-hour window in which to conduct a bear hunt. If anyone fails in his or her attempt, then the next person on the list gets a chance, and another 48-hour hunting window. The system carries on until the quota is filled. But while bear hunting carries great honour, and the families of successful hunters throw feasts in order to share the meat widely with the community, there are those who find the quota system disrespectful to bears.
Respect for animals lies at the heart of Inuit hunting culture. Animals such as caribou, beluga whales, and ringed and bearded seals "give themselves" to hunters who prove their generosity by widely sharing meat and skins, and who prove their humility by not bragging or gloating about their hunting prowess. But the quota system, the 48-hour window of opportunity and the scramble to hunt a bear all run counter to the respect that many Inuit believe polar bears deserve and that all other animals (none of which are subjected to a similar quota system) are accorded in the hunt.
Taking a cue from some other communities, in the mid-1990s a small portion of the Arviat quota was diverted to trophy hunting. For 12 years, wealthy Americans (and a few from other countries) came to the town each November to hunt. They paid eye-watering amounts of money for the opportunity to add a polar bear to their trophy rooms back in Texas, Michigan, California, and elsewhere. Local hunters worked as guides, tracking bears for these wealthy visitors and taking care of them during their time in the Arctic.
The relatively large sums of money earned during 10 days of guiding proved a godsend to many families. Invariably, it was reinvested into snowmobiles, rifles, boats and outboard motors and the other expensive equipment necessary to hunt the caribou, seals and beluga whales on which Inuit rely for food. This limited trophy hunt benefited vast extended families.
But in 2008, polar bear trophy hunting came to an abrupt end when the US listed polar bears as "threatened" under its Endangered Species Act. This meant that US hunters could no longer take their trophies home from Canada. Having relied on that November income for more than a decade, many Arviarmiut were at a loss.
It was then that some branched out into ecotourism, organising sight-seeing tours, and often hiring the same experienced hunters who had previously guided trophy hunters. These men now help visitors shoot polar bears with cameras rather than rifles. Eco-tourists do not bring in as much revenue as the deep-pocketed trophy hunters, but there are more of them, and they provide employment for a greater part of the year.
Despite the dangers posed to humans, Arviarmiut are seeking ways to live with rather than against polar bears. They are adapting their behaviour to the changing behaviour of the bears - which gives hope that large white bellyflopping animals may remain one of the sights of Arviat for many years to come.
Martina Tyrrell is an environmental anthropologist, writer and sailor. She writes, among other things, about her encounters with marine wildlife on her blog Carina Of Devon.
After many years photographing people and wildlife in Nunavut, Nadine Lamoureux and Lynne Rollin (Barnyard Studio) are now based near Ottawa.
More from the Magazine
Until the 1970s, it was impossible to travel around Canada's Yellowknife region in the winter if you weren't travelling by dogsled. Even though transport options have increased, sled dogs are still prized and prominent in this Arctic region.
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Moors Murderer Ian Brady was able to mix with vulnerable borstal boys in Wormwood Scrubs prison for more than five years, newly released Home Office files reveal. Even after one young prisoner alleged that Brady had had sex with him, no action was taken for several months, the BBC's Sanchia Berg reports. | For decades he was Britain's most notorious murderer.
Ian Brady and his girlfriend Myra Hindley tortured, sexually assaulted and murdered children in the mid-1960s and buried some of the bodies on Saddleworth Moor, near Manchester.
Following his conviction in 1966, Brady was initially held at Durham prison. He was then sent to Parkhurst, and transferred in 1974 to Wormwood Scrubs in London.
Placed in the segregation unit, used for prisoners likely to be attacked, he began a hunger strike in the summer of 1975, demanding to be moved and allowed to associate with other prisoners.
As he lost weight, he was moved to the prison hospital. He was allowed to stay there even after he began eating again, in a room on the Mental Observation Landing, known as G2.
At this time, boys from Feltham Borstal would be sent to Wormwood Scrubs hospital if they were suffering from mental health problems. They could be as young as 15 - a similar age to some of Brady's victims.
As early as 1976, the prison's principal medical officer had spotted the problem.
"He takes an unusual interest in any adolescent inmate who may be located on the landing and his influence in such a situation is certainly not a wholesome one," he wrote in a report dated 2 September.
The staff had had to move boys off the landing to get them away from him, he added.
But despite numerous objections made by staff and others over the years, arguing that Brady should be moved, he stayed on the Mental Observation Landing, and his privileges steadily increased.
Brady was allowed to watch television with other patients and given duties that enabled him to move beyond the landing, cleaning toilets and showers.
He lost his job in autumn 1981, after a young person reported that Brady had had sex with him, and he was moved back to Parkhurst the following year.
How was it possible for a prisoner like Brady to be given such treatment?
Part of it has to do with his personality - he was often described as manipulative and arrogant by prison staff. For years he campaigned, complained and threatened in order to get his way. It usually failed, but occasionally it worked.
Brady also benefited from support from the penal reformer, Lord Longford, a former Labour cabinet minister. The Home Office papers reveal how Longford lobbied ministers, including the home secretary, on Brady's behalf.
When Brady first arrived at Durham on 6 May 1966 he was described as "a fairly tall person with a tendency to break into a cold smile without apparent reason… Quite unemotional."
He succeeded in getting a degree of special treatment. He persuaded the prison's welfare officer to get him homoerotic novels, as well as the works of Machiavelli - the Italian Renaissance writer who described how a ruler could maintain his grip on power by unscrupulous means. He was also given private tutoring in German by academics from Durham University - until the prison education service was asked to pay for it.
But Brady didn't achieve his main aim at that time, which was to see Myra Hindley for "conjugal" visits. She was in Holloway prison, over 250 miles away. In protest, Brady isolated himself and refused to associate with other prisoners. He even asked for dark glasses and ear plugs so he could shut out the world entirely. In 1969, 1970, 1971 he went on hunger strike. None of it worked.
After Myra Hindley stopped writing to Brady, he changed his campaign. Instead, he started lobbying to get to Broadmoor, the secure hospital. Doctors were reluctant. They considered him a psychopath, who would not benefit from treatment.
It was at this time, 1971, that Brady enlisted Lord Longford's help - but the peer couldn't persuade politicians to move him.
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Four years later, Brady began a new hunger strike at Wormwood Scrubs. Once moved to the prison hospital he allowed himself to be "artificially fed" even though his "hunger strike" formally continued.
He told Lord Longford in September 1975 that he found conditions in the prison "more pleasant and civilised" than in the segregation unit, and on 16 December Longford met Home Secretary Roy Jenkins to relay Brady's request to stay there.
Jenkins responded that "Brady could be assured that he would stay in the prison hospital for as long as he needed to for his health."
Ten days later, according to the prison records, Ian Brady ended his hunger strike.
Peter Meakings, now in his 80s, was an assistant governor at Wormwood Scrubs at the time. The files show he supervised several of Lord Longford's visits to Ian Brady.
On 12 April 1976 the visit began with Lord Longford "apologising for forgetting to bring cigarettes". "I remember Brady was really angry about that" says Meakings. Brady preferred the French brand, Gauloises, which could be hard to get hold of.
In his note, Peter Meakings wrote that Brady made "frequent acrimonious comments about the Home Office" and "various offensive remarks concerning individual prison staff". He remembered that Brady seemed very much in charge - telling Longford what to do, and being very curt and abrupt with him.
Peter Meakings says he always kept his distance from Ian Brady, even if the prisoner tried to be friendly. "One of the children he murdered was the same age as my son at the time. I would get an odd feeling, a kind of shiver down my spine, when I was in the room with him."
By September 1976 Brady's health had recovered. In fact he was slightly overweight, as the prison's principal medical officer (PMO) observed. But he stayed in the hospital.
The Moors murders
In December 1977, a new acting PMO wrote to the prison governor saying Brady should be returned to segregation.
Brady wrote to Lord Longford to complain, saying how grateful he had been for the chance to show his "progress", and how much he valued being given "a modest opportunity to integrate in a constructive community of staff I have the highest respect for".
It seems to have worked. Brady stayed on the hospital wing.
In March 1978, the prison's senior medical officer (SMO) expressed concerns about Brady's presence in the prison hospital and his contacts with vulnerable prisoners.
"I deplore his association with young borstal trainees and adult mentally ill patients," the SMO wrote.
"There is little change in his hard remorseless egotistical attitude. He is one of the few men to whom I would attach the label 'evil'."
But the SMO concluded that there was no way of segregating them, given the "therapeutic milieu".
Members of the prison's Board of Visitors were the next to object to Brady's "privileged" treatment, in mid-1978. But the Wormwood Scrubs medical officers told them it was the "best solution to an impossible problem".
The board was unimpressed and said it would make a formal complaint. This led to an exchange between the prison's PMO and the deputy director of the Prison Services Department.
"If he is sent back to the segregation unit he will go on hunger strike and we shall be back to where we were several years ago," the PMO wrote in a letter dated 5 June 1978.
He said he was not too worried about Brady's position "except for one aspect of it and that is his having access to young inmates". He went on: "A malicious newspaper could make great play of it."
In August 1979, the hospital's SMO wanted to discharge Brady. He wrote to the director of prison medical services: "Into ward G2 are admitted both boys and men who are mentally ill. Is it proper to have Brady in with them?"
The SMO agreed Brady might try "blackmail" once again, by going on hunger strike. "But then I would deal with him as I would any other inmate - in the proper ethical medical manner."
The file doesn't include the director of prison medical services' response.
But five months later, he wrote to the prison's PMO. Boys at Feltham Borstal had been talking about Brady, he said, and wanted to know why Brady had access to "those of tender years".
The PMO wrote back, a fortnight later, with a rather impatient tone.
"This is an old one. We have been over it many times. Under the present circumstances it would be impossible to prevent borstal trainees who are admitted to G2 from coming into contact with Brady."
He added, harshly: "For what it is worth, I doubt if Brady has any effect whatsoever on 'those of tender years'."
That confidence was misplaced. A year later, in February 1981, the file shows the PMO was visited by a young prisoner from the landing where Brady lived.
"He was in a very agitated state," runs the PMO's letter to the governor. Another prisoner "wanted to have homosexual relations with him" and knew that Brady had had sex with him "some months ago".
The young man was terrified of what this prisoner might do if he refused - and asked to be moved. He was.
"I am most concerned about Brady," says the PMO's letter. "I never have been happy about locating disturbed boys or young men on the landing. Brady has shown rather too much interest in them in the past."
Knowing the prison layout, Peter Meakings can see how Brady might have been able to have sex with another inmate.
"As the landing cleaner, Brady wouldn't just have had free run of the passageway outside the rooms, where there were officers supervising, he would also have had access to the toilets," he says. There were no toilets inside the cells then. Showers were also separately located.
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Even this incident didn't lead to Brady's instant removal from the Mental Observation Landing - he was still there in August, months later. The files do indicate he had lost his job as a landing cleaner by November 1981. Brady complained about this to Lord Longford - who, as before, contacted the Home Office to intervene on his behalf.
This time, there was no private meeting with the home secretary, just a short note from Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State Lord Belstead. He wrote: "I am satisfied that there were good reasons for the decision to remove Mr Brady from his job, and I see no reason to intervene in this matter."
In March 1982 Brady was transferred to Parkhurst, and from there he was later moved to Ashworth secure hospital, where he died in 2017.
Frances Crook, chief executive of the Howard League for Penal Reform, says that the high-profile support Ian Brady enjoyed contributed to an "extraordinary set of circumstances". However, she adds: "What happened, and what he did in prisons, I think, is not extraordinary. Actually, I think it happens and has happened every day for years, and is still happening."
A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: "There have been huge changes in the criminal justice system in the last 40 years and allegations of sexual assault are taken extremely seriously and reported to the police. Boys under 18 are placed together in youth custody and those aged between 18-21 are held either in young offender institutions with their own age group, or in designated cells or wings in the adult prison estate. We are conducting a review into safeguarding in the youth estate to further improve the welfare of those in our care."
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It was a time of grief, shock, and resolve. | By Will LeitchBBC News
Constable Stephen Carroll was murdered in March 2009 during a surge in dissident republican activity.
Just two days before the officer was shot dead, two soldiers on duty at Massereene barracks in Antrim were killed by the Real IRA.
But it was the Continuity IRA which claimed responsibility for the death of the police officer.
The then Chief Constable Sir Hugh Orde said the PSNI would not be stopped by dissident republicans.
"It is self evident that the more universal the support for the small disenfranchised and rather ridiculous group that is that dangerous, to realise their whole attempt is futile," he said.
"We will not step back."
It brought the first and deputy first ministers together to share a widow's grief - uniting to condemn the murder.
Speaking shortly after the death, Peter Robinson said it was "a battle of wills between the political class and the evil gunmen".
"The political class will win," he said.
"We are absolutely determined these people will not direct us, will not frame our agenda and will not cause us to retreat from the steps which we believe to be right to take this country forward."
His words were echoed by Martin McGuinness.
"These people are traitors to the island of Ireland, they have betrayed the political desires, hopes and aspirations of all the people who live on this island and they don't deserve to be supported by anyone," he said.
So who was Constable Stephen Carroll?
He was a husband, a father, a grandfather, he liked a laugh, loved sport, lived for his family.
Born in the Republic, raised in England, and settled in Banbridge, he was also a Catholic and a police officer, starting to think about retirement.
His wife Kate described the conversation she had that morning with her husband.
"He said to me that day he was going to work, he said, 'Kate, you know, we've come through a lot, we've come through this and that and wouldn't it be ironic, just with my last year-and-a-half, that something would happen', and it did," she said.
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A man has been seriously injured in a two-vehicle crash on the A82 near Fort William. | The collision involving a car and a van happened at about 10:00 and closed the trunk road between the town and North Ballachulish.
Some drivers in cars have been able to use the Corran Ferry, but most of the traffic have been following a 161-mile (259km) diversion along the A861.
The A82 reopened later in the afternoon.
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