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When Sergei Skripal, a former Russian double agent, collapsed suddenly on Sunday in the sleepy cathedral city of Salisbury, there were unavoidable echoes of a messy, high-profile death in London a little over a decade before. | By Joel GunterBBC News
In 2006, Alexander Litvinenko, another former Russian agent, was rushed to hospital after collapsing in London. As the world watched, a rare and highly radioactive isotope destroyed Litvinenko's organs one by one, and he died three weeks later.
A British public inquiry found that the former Russian agent had ingested Polonium 210, and that his assassination was likely ordered directly by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Mr Skripal, 66, who was imprisoned in Russia for working for British intelligence and later came to the UK as part of a spy swap, is currently in critical condition, along with his 33-year-old daughter who was also taken ill. Authorities say they are trying to determine if he was poisoned.
Russia has denied any involvement, but the case has put renewed scrutiny on a string of deaths in the UK in the past two decades. The chair of the home affairs select committee, Yvette Cooper MP, wrote to Home Secretary Amber Rudd on Tuesday calling for a review of 14 other cases.
Those cases were variously found to have been heart attacks, suicides, accidents, and deaths by natural causes, but some allege that they amount to a pattern of state-sponsored murder on British streets.
Heartbreak grass
Security guard Neil St Clair-Ford was driving through Weybridge in Surrey in November 2012 when he saw something lying in the road ahead of him. He pulled over and found Alexander Perepilichnyy, an exiled Russian banker, in the foetal position, pale, cold, and displaying "very faint" signs of life.
Mr St Clair-Ford called a local former Navy colleague, Liam Walsh, to help administer first aid. Mr Walsh told an inquest that Perepilichnyy vomited "greeny-yellow" bile during mouth-to-mouth resuscitation with a strange taste, like "licking a battery".
Perepilichnyy was born in Ukraine and made his fortune as a financier in Russia, allegedly helping government-connected Russians launder money. In 2010 he fled to Britain and began to co-operate with British authorities. He collapsed during a run near his home, the day he returned from a short trip to Paris.
Initial toxicology tests on Perepilichnyy's body revealed nothing suspicious and police said they had no evidence of foul play. But later tests performed by an expert botanist at Kew Gardens suggested the presence of a rare and deadly plant toxin in Perepilichnyy's stomach.
Gelsemium, a flowering plant native to China and South East Asia, is known as "heartbreak grass", because its leaves, if swallowed, cause cardiac arrest. Further tests of the compound found in Perepilichnyy could not definitively identify it as gelsemium, and an inquest into his death was suspended last year pending yet more tests. The inquest resumes next month.
US intelligence sources told the BBC in 2016 that they believed Perepilichnyy was murdered. An extensive investigation by Buzzfeed News claimed that the businessman was one of at least 14 deaths in the UK that US officials suspected were connected to Russia.
'The highest level of risk'
The following year, 2013, Boris Berezovsky, a one-time oligarch and close friend of Vladimir Putin, was found hanged in his bathroom. All the evidence seemed to point to a suicide. He had been suffering from depression and was in debt. According to police there was no sign of a struggle. A Home Office pathologist concluded that his injuries were consistent with hanging.
But he had also made himself a sworn enemy of Mr Putin, having fled Russia for exile in Britain and fiercely criticised the regime from afar.
Berezovsky's family arranged for an asphyxiation expert to examine photographs of his body. Dr Bernd Brinkmann testified that the ligature mark on Berezovsky's neck did not share the typical V-shape created by a hanging, and instead suggested strangling. The dead man also had a broken rib and a cut on the back of his head. It was enough to persuade the coroner to record an open verdict.
"Anyone Putin deems to have betrayed Russia is at the highest level of risk," said Bill Browder, a former Moscow-based financier who led a campaign to impose sanctions on top Russian officials accused of corruption - sanctions that enraged Mr Putin.
"And Russia can get away with brazenness in the UK because there have never been any consequences to Russian assassinations here," he said. "The British government either ignores the crimes completely, as they did in the Perepilichnyy case, or they recognise the crime and don't do anything about it."
Speaking in parliament on Tuesday, UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said any evidence of Russian involvement with Mr Skripal's condition would be dealt with "appropriately and robustly".
"I say to governments around the world that no attempt to take innocent life on UK soil will go unsanctioned or unpunished," he said.
Among the other deaths flagged to the home secretary on Tuesday are those of Gareth Williams, the so-called "spy in the bag", whose badly decomposed body was found locked inside a holdall in his bath; Dr Matthew Puncher, a British scientist involved in the Litvinenko case who was found in his kitchen with multiple stab wounds from two separate knives; and Scot Young, a business associate of Berezovsky, who was found impaled on railings outside his London flat after falling from a fourth-floor window.
Williams' death was ruled to be "probably an accident" and Puncher's and Young's both suicides, and British police say they have found no evidence of Russian involvement in any of the cases barring Litvinenko's.
"British police are under no sort of political pressure whatsoever," Tony Brenton, the British ambassador to Moscow at the time of Litvinenko's death, told the BBC. "If they had found evidence of Russian involvement in those cases, we would have followed it up."
But the UK government has faced criticism over a perceived lack of action. In the wake of Litvinenko's death, the UK tried and failed to extradite two Russian agents alleged to have carried out the hit. Instead, several Russian diplomats were expelled, provoking a tit for tat response from Russia.
The problem facing the UK government now, said Mr Brenton, is that ministers have already levied significant sanctions on Russia over its actions in Ukraine and Syria, and diplomatic relations are already very poor.
"If it is proven that this was an attack with Russian state involvement we will of course do something, there will be lots of anger and probably more sanctions. But we have already used up an awful lot of our ammunition. The locker is quite bare," he said.
In a statement, the Russian embassy in London said: "Media reports create an impression of a planned operation by the Russian special services, which is completely untrue."
In Salisbury, counter-terror police have taken over the investigation. The park bench where Mr Skripal collapsed has been cordoned off and a restaurant where he ate lunch has been temporarily closed.
If it turns out to have been a Russian attack, part of the purpose will have been to warn those in Russia against betrayal, and those in exile that they are never safe, said Mr Browder. "It sends a message to the rank and file that terrible things can befall you and your family," he said.
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Scottish Secretary David Mundell has confirmed £3m funding for Inverness during a meeting with Highland Council. | The money would enable the local authority to go ahead with plans to upgrade the grounds and access to Inverness Castle.
A second project to create a free public access wi-fi scheme for the city is also expected to be funded.
The money will come from the UK government.
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The thousands of lettings agents and landlords around the country who reject housing benefit claimants could be flouting equality laws, due to a recent legal case. | By Hannah RichardsonBBC News education and social affairs reporter
The widespread practice has led to "no-go zones" for those on lower incomes - especially in desirable residential areas.
But single mother Rosie Keogh won compensation for sex discrimination from a lettings agency that refused to consider her as a tenant because she was on state benefit.
The cleaner and former paralegal successfully argued that blanket bans on benefit claimants indirectly discriminated against women, especially single women.
This is because they are proportionately more likely to be claiming housing benefit than single men, according to official figures.
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Rosie's attempt to rent a property in a smart area of Birmingham in May 2016 was blocked when the lettings agent found she would pay some of the rent via housing benefit.
'Second-class citizen'
The agent told her it would not be proceeding with her application for a property in Kings Heath before it had looked into her individual circumstances or assessed how reliable a tenant she would be.
She had been living in the same property for 11 years with the rent being paid in full every time.
After a letter of complaint was dismissed by the agents, the mother of one issued a claim for discrimination in the county court.
"I felt something had to be done to challenge it. I was motivated by anger at such inequitable practice," said Rosie.
"It made me feel like a second-class citizen.
"You are being treated differently - and it's women and women with children who are bearing the brunt of this because they need to work part-time."
And Rosie is not alone. There are whole areas of towns and cities in England that have become virtual no-go zones for people on housing benefit because lettings agents and landlords are unwilling to deal with them.
A survey of 1,137 private landlords for housing charity Shelter in 2017 found that 43% had an outright ban on letting to such claimants. A further 18% preferred not to let to them. And an investigation by the BBC last year found many landlords prefer to let to families with pets than those on benefits.
Rosie was supported in her case by Shelter, whose legal officer Rose Arnall said: "By applying a blanket policy they are actually preventing good tenants from accessing the private rented sector.
"Women are more likely to be caring for children and therefore working part-time and are therefore more likely to top up their income by claiming housing benefit."
Because of the lack of available social housing, more than a fifth of those renting privately are relying on housing benefit either wholly or partly to cover their rent, according to 2017 figures.
Eighteen months after Rosie first began her fightback, lettings agent Nicholas George admitted indirect discrimination on the grounds of her sex, settling out of court with £2,000 compensation.
She also had help from the Bar Pro Bono Unit with the case who found a barrister willing to help for free.
Robert Brown gave advice and drew up the consent order which was witnessed by a judge at Birmingham County Court.
Although not setting a legally binding precedent, the case established that the practice could be considered indirect sexual discrimination.
Polly Neate, chief executive of Shelter, said private renting was so expensive that many people could not get by without housing benefit, even if they were working.
"Our advisers repeatedly hear from desperate mothers battling to find someone willing to let to them, in spite of being able to pay the rent.
"We are urging all landlords and letting agents to get rid of 'no DSS' policies, and treat people fairly on a case-by-case basis."
Chris Norris, head of policy at the National Landlords Association, agreed there was no place for discrimination on the basis of someone's gender.
"Cases like this highlight the very worst of what a minority of renters have to put up with when looking to secure a home in the private rented sector."
'Short-sighted'
He added: "The number of landlords willing to rent to housing benefit tenants has fallen dramatically over the last few years because cuts to welfare and problems with the universal credit system are making it more and more difficult for anyone in receipt of housing support to pay their rent on time and sustain long-term tenancies."
Labour's housing spokesman John Healey said government cuts to housing benefit had stripped away the safety net for families and led to "no-go zones" for families on low and middle incomes.
"These short-sighted decisions have made landlords more wary of tenants claiming housing benefit and so made discrimination more likely."
A government spokesman said: "It's wrong to treat someone differently because they are claiming a benefit.
"The majority of claimants are comfortable managing their money but we are increasing support to help people who need it to stay on top of their payments."
He added that from April, people in receipt of housing benefit would receive two weeks' rent when they moved on to universal credit and landlords could now apply to have the benefit paid directly to them if their tenants were more than two months in arrears.
But one landlord, Tom Black, said his landlord insurance prohibited him from taking tenants that are on housing benefits when their tenancy starts.
Another said: "As a council accredited landlord who trains others to become accredited, I can safely say that the "no DSS" is not down to landlord preference or discrimination... it's entirely down to (a.) mortgage terms and (b.) severe delays in the claimants HB claim, universal credit policy to pay claimants directly into their bank account.
"We personally could fill our houses 10 times over if we could rent to DSS as our phones never stop ringing, day and night, whenever we advertise a vacant one."
Here's what you've been saying about this issue:
Sarah from Andover
I am a mother of 3 children, ages 3, 7 and 11. I have had to private rent for the last 8 years due to the lack of council properties available. I have moved 7 times within those 8 years and each time to a completely different area because of lack of estate agents and landlords who will except housing benefit. We have had to move due to landlords no longer wanting us after the benefit cuts, and also bad landlords who would not keep the house together. Due to be refused a tenancy over and over again so many times due to being on housing benefit, we have had to look further afield. We have moved from Southampton to Eastleigh to Gosport to Andover. My daughter who is aged 11 has been very affected by this after now being in her 8th school and this has effected her education and her mental health, due to constantly having to make new friends and losing many every time. This is all because there are so so many landlords who will not accept housing benefit even though we are great tenants and always pay our rent on time as it is our priority. This needs to come to a stop. We do not feel safe in any property. We have been faced with homelessness previously due to not finding anywhere and even when we Have, the estate agents feel they can charge hundreds of pounds more due to our circumstances which does not make any sense as we have a low income so we are forced to be homeless if we can't pay or find a suitable guarantor. These guarantors that they want have to be very specific and earning so much money but unfortunateley not everyone knows someone that is employed and earning so much money.
David from Birmingham
My family and I have been trying to move house for over a year now. We currently rent privately and have been keeping up with our rent at this property for over 7 years. I search online every day for properties, from Cornwall, right up to the Scottish Borders. I am lucky if I find 1 property a month that will accept DSS and be in a suitable area for us to raise our children. Being so few of these properties, they are snapped up almost amediately. People on benefits are being viewed as a nuisance risk and are being pushed into inner city areas blighted by crime. The children are being punished because their parents can't work, or have a job with a low income. How can that be fair?
Lisa from Middlesbrough
Welcome to my world!! It is hardly news that pretty much all Lettings Agents have 'No DSS' on their advertisements. The other way they stop Housing Benefit recipients from renting are - 'HB accepted with a guarantor' (I don't know anyone who could do this for me) or, the absolute doozie 'HB considered, please ask' (this means, Housing Benefit considered if you can pay six months' rent up front, plus their fee and a deposit - if you had that much spare, you wouldn't be claiming Housing Benefit!). I have battled to house my family, as, even when I was well enough to work, I needed a HB top-up, as I'm a full-time carer for 2 of my adult children, I can only work part-time. If I'm honest, I have lied to agents in the past, just to get a roof over our heads.
Stephen from Birmingham
I am a wheelchair user and any property I phone up and tell then this and I'm on housing benefits it's a straight no not even considered. I arranged a viewing at a house in risinghurst, oxford and got as far as signing documents. Landlord was happy to be housing a mother and two children (aswel as the family dog) but as soon as I mentioned housing benefits paying a small fraction of the cost, the entire agreement shut down and the agent became frustrated that I hadn't told her prior to viewing.
Samantha from Oxford
It was embarrassing and upsetting. We are stuck in a privately rented property that is much too small for us because nobody will give us the benefit of the doubt. If we are asked to vacate this property I have no faith that we will be able to find anywhere else to live. Despite that we have paid our current landlord every month for 11 years, and that upon graduation, I will be earning a more than reasonable wage and the benefits will only be temporary. It's degrading and frustrating. The sooner this is (rightly) viewed as discrimination, the better.
Robert from London
I was denied even inquiring about looking at private flats in London simply due to claiming housing benefit. Surprisingly, my wage is above the national average just over 29,000, but in London and having a child, this still entitled me and my partner to around £440 per month housing benefit. I tried to explain to the letting agent I am in full time, contracted employment, and anyone with a child earning under £35,000 per annum will be receiving housing benefit of some sort in London and they said it didn't matter. This isn't just blocking women from renting it's blocking entire families.
Sheila from Isle of Wight
My daughter was a blame-free tenant for 10 years in one property from which she was given notice for no reason. Despite numerous letters of appeal and requests for conciliatory meetings, the landlords did not answer any of her correspondence. She could not even get them to give her a written reference. She sought replacement accommodation for herself (a lone parent) and her two little children aged 6 and 3, for six months before finding a landlord/ estate agent who would take her (on housing benefit) with my husband as guarantor. The whole experience has not only caused her great stress and anxiety and has led to an exacerbation of her chronic depression, but has also affected her six-year old who has become angry and withdrawn and fearful they will be evicted again from their new home. The stipulation "no HB, Children or Pets" was appended to most of the rental properties on offer. It reminded me of London in the 50s and 60s. "No blacks or Irish."
James from Brighton
I am disabled and I have to be on housing benefits. It is virtually impossible to find a place that accepts housing benefits and those that do accept it require a guarantor with unacceptable requirements. I was made homeless and spent time sleeping rough when my landlord of my previous place decided to renovate and increase rent and price me out of the place and so he asked me to leave. I had paid rent in full for the previous 8 years with him no problem and have never had a problem. I am now stuck in a council home with no chance of ever moving or improving the place where I live. The equality act should account for disabled people on housing benefits being discriminated against. Since I could not go to a letting agent I tried to rent a place from a landlord personally advertising and renting their property, going that route I was also told on a number of occasion that their buy-to-let mortgages stated they could not let out to people on housing benefits. This shows the banks are also discriminating against disabled and people on housing benefit. Is it just because of a few rotten apples spoiling the bunch for the rest of us? Where and when does this discrimination originate from? The 70's or 80's?
The fact letting agents call it DSS makes me think so, it hasn't been called that for decades. What are the statistic for rent arrears with people on housing benefit versus those on jobs? What about those with disabilities? With JSA type benefits allowing housing benefits they can be stopped and rent arrears can accrue if you miss an appointment, a horrible position to have that held over your head, however, if disabilities grant housing benefit, your disability is not going to suddenly disappear and your housing benefit with it. It is blatant discrimination against people with disabilities and those on housing benefit, it disgusts me. Renting decisions should be based on your previous history and if it is good you should not automatically be excluded or need a guarantor.
Frank from Stratford-Upon-Avon
Housing Benefit is just that. For Housing. Landlords would accept benefit tenants if rent was paid directly to Landlords with a guarantee that it would start at the beginning of a tenancy and be guaranteed to continue. The reality is that once a tenant is is a property, the assessments can take many weeks. The slightest error by a tenant means the application has to start again, meaning 6-8 weeks delay. The Council isn't concerned as the applicant isn't homeless. This is the reality, while of course a Landlord still has to pay his mortgage. I just get tired of the ill informed comments by Shelter. How many properties to HB tenants do they rent out? How many properties do they rent to anyone? Millions in income. So why don't they put their income to good use, and help solve the problem. Yes, there are bad Landlords, but the vast majority are good, and wish for good, long term tenants. Conversely, there are good HB tenants, but equally others who are not..
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In 2014, the International Space Station had to move three times to avoid lethal chunks of space debris. The problem also threatens crucial and costly satellites in orbit. So what is the scale of the space junk problem, and what can we do about it?
| By Dr Hugh LewisUniversity of Southampton
Forty-five years ago the associate director of science at Nasa's Marshall Space Flight Center, Ernst Stuhlinger, an original member of Wernher von Braun's Operation Paperclip team, was asked by Sister Mary Jucunda, a Zambia-based nun, how he could suggest spending billions of dollars on spaceflight when many children were starving on Earth.
Today, Stuhlinger's response still provides a powerful justification for the costs associated with space research.
"It is certainly not by accident that we begin to see the tremendous tasks waiting for us at a time when the young space age has provided us the first good look at our own planet," he said.
"Very fortunately though, the space age not only holds out a mirror in which we can see ourselves, it also provides us with the technologies, the challenge, the motivation, and even with the optimism to attack these tasks with confidence."
In the intervening years, the maturing space infrastructure has supported our new and ongoing efforts to tackle global health, hunger, poverty, education, disaster risk reduction, energy security and climate change.
Indeed, we have made great use of Stuhlinger's "mirror" to meet many of society's biggest challenges.
Sadly, the space environment has borne the brunt of our increasing reliance on satellites and our long-lived belief that "space is big".
More than 5,000 launches since the start of the space age, each carrying satellites for Earth observation, or communications, for example, have resulted in space becoming increasingly congested and contested. The issue has been examined for a BBC Horizon documentary on BBC Two.
Now, the US Space Surveillance Network is tracking tens of thousands of objects larger than a tennis ball orbiting above us, and we suspect that there are one hundred million objects larger than 1mm in the environment.
Due to their enormous orbital speed (17,000 mph), each one of these objects carries with it the potential to damage or destroy the satellites that we now depend on.
Red Conjunction
Perhaps the most visible symptoms of the space junk problem are the regular collision avoidance manoeuvres being performed by the International Space Station (ISS), and the increasingly frequent and alarming need for its occupants to "shelter-in-place" when a piece of junk is detected too late for a manoeuvre.
The systems on the ISS that provide vital life support are also responsible for its unique vulnerability to a debris impact - a pressurised module in a vacuum might behave like a balloon if punctured.
The recent "red conjunction" (where a piece of debris comes close enough to pose a threat to the space station) involving a fragment from a Russian satellite on 17 July this year was yet another demonstration of the growing threat from space junk.
Thanks to the hit film "Gravity", and the Oscar-nominated performance of Sandra Bullock, we can now readily appreciate the anxiety that must be felt by the astronauts and cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station whenever they receive such a "red conjunction" call.
In spite of these occurrences, the space station is actually orbiting at an altitude where the number of debris is relatively low.
At higher altitudes the amount of space junk is substantially greater, but only robotic spacecraft are exposed there. Nevertheless, these satellites are some of the most valuable for understanding our planet. Due to this congestion, there is an increasing chance that the space junk population could become self-sustaining.
That is, more junk could be created by collisions than is removed through the natural decay caused by atmospheric drag. Indeed, we already have some experience of this: in February 2009 two relatively small satellites collided over Siberia creating about 2,000 new fragments that could be tracked, with many still orbiting today and regularly passing close to other satellites.
Space junk in numbers
Sources: Nasa, Esa
The Kessler Syndrome
Self-sustaining collision activity is something else that the film Gravity showed us. Dubbed the "Kessler Syndrome" after the Nasa scientist Don Kessler (now retired) who recognised and described this process with Burton Cour-Palais in 1978, such a scenario is a real - albeit often exaggerated - possibility.
Concerns of an uncontrollable growth of the space junk population and the loss of key satellites that enable us to address our society's problems have prompted scientists to look for ways to remove junk from space: If we can remove the problematic junk, then we can stall or even prevent the Kessler Syndrome.
This is no easy task, however, requiring new technologies, potentially new laws and - crucially - financial investment. The European Space Agency (Esa) is taking the lead, working on a mission it calls "e.Deorbit" that has the objective of removing a large European satellite from space.
The mission is ambitious; numerous technologies have been developed and assessed, including a solution based on a harpoon proposed by UK engineers from Airbus Defence and Space. It is also not without risk, but a successful outcome will surely show the space-faring world that a technical solution to the space junk problem exists, even if the political, legal and financial issues have yet to be solved.
The e.Deorbit mission will face key hurdles in 2016: its systems requirements review and the Esa Ministerial Council meeting, where approval (and funding) to proceed with the mission will be debated.
Tracking systems
Small satellites: the future?
Against the background of an increasing space junk problem, a renaissance is now taking place in space; what was the principal domain of governments and space agencies, with their large, multi-billion dollar satellites, is becoming the province of an emerging industry that is revolutionising the use of space.
Diminutive companies and start-ups, in particular, are showing how small budgets do not necessarily mean small ambitions. For example, San Francisco's Planet Labs, are using "cubesats" to redefine the market for Earth imagery. Their Dove satellites are smaller than a briefcase, yet have the capability to deliver high-resolution images of the Earth for a multitude of purposes.
With plans by other companies, including SpaceX and OneWeb, to develop large constellations of small, low-cost satellites, there is some concern within space agencies about the long-term consequences of the ubiquitous and rapid commercialisation of space. In particular, these concerns focus on the abrupt increase in the number of satellites orbiting the Earth, which could substantially increase the need for collision avoidance manoeuvres and hasten the onset of the Kessler Syndrome.
'Super wicked problem'
In 2014, Brian Weeden, a technical adviser for the Secure World Foundation, described space junk as a "super wicked problem." Such problems, he explained, are particularly challenging to solve because time is running out, there is no central authority providing guidance or support, those seeking to solve the problem are also causing the problem, and the solutions are left for future generations to find.
The critical first step in tackling super wicked problems is to expand the group of people who support measures that reduce the risk. Indeed, there are encouraging signs that both old and new space actors understand the need to mitigate negative impacts of their activities in space and to limit the consequences for other space users.
Several companies, including Planet Labs and OneWeb have affirmed their commitment to tackle the space junk problem in the public domain. However, much work is still needed to fully understand the problem, develop technologies (such as e.Deorbit), remove legal and political barriers, and to increase awareness. The Kessler Syndrome remains an ever-present threat.
The space age has enabled global solutions to some of society's biggest challenges, just as Ernst Stuhlinger described in his letter to Sister Mary Jucunda. It has also held out a mirror and shown us that a continuing disregard for the space environment will surely affect our ability to deliver these solutions, with potential consequences for millions of people.
Hugh Lewis is a Senior Lecturer in Aerospace Engineering at the University of Southampton. He is also a member of the UK Space Agency delegation to the Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee and a member of the UK delegation to the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space.
HORIZON: The Trouble With Space Junk is on BBC Two at 2000 on Wednesday 5th August.
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It may be the era of the box-set binge, but many of us are still finding time to enjoy books. | By Rebecca ThomasArts and entertainment reporter
In the UK alone, sales of adult fiction, non-fiction and children's print books have remained healthy over the past 12 months. Before the Christmas boost, they were up 1% to 191.5 million copies sold, according to market analysis firm Nielsen.
Meanwhile, Nielsen predicts a sales increase of audiobooks of 15% to nine million recordings. Ebooks, however, are estimated to be down 10%.
To whet your appetite for the books out in 2020, we've picked a selection of adult titles in different genres. Hopefully you'll find something to enjoy.
Fiction by established best-sellers
Utopia Avenue - David Mitchell
The author: A twice Booker Prize-nominated author, Mitchell's work includes Cloud Atlas, The Bone Clocks and number9dream. He has also translated (with his wife) two books on autism by Japanese writer Naoki Higashida and contributed to the Netflix series Sense8 and the next Matrix movie.
The book: Utopia Avenue is Mitchell's first full novel since The Bone Clocks in 2014. It recounts the meteoric rise and plummeting downfall of a British band in 1967 London, set against a backdrop of riots, drugs, love, sex, madness and death.
Published 2 June.
The Mirror and the Light - Hilary Mantel
The author: Mantel won the Booker Prize for the first two novels in her epic story of Thomas Cromwell, Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies. In May, she said of the closing chapter in the saga: "This book has been the greatest challenge of my writing life, and the most rewarding; I hope and trust my readers will find it has been worth the wait."
The book: The Mirror and the Light traces the final years of Cromwell, the man who rose from nowhere to become one of the top advisors to Henry VIII. Mantel's story is of the fierce and tragic conflict between royal will and Cromwell's vision of a modern nation.
Published 5 March.
Hamnet - Maggie O'Farrell
The author: O'Farrell is the best-selling author of novels including After You'd Gone, The Distance Between Us and The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox. In 2010, The Hand That First Held Mine won the Costa Novel Award. Instructions For A Heatwave was shortlisted in 2013, as was This Must Be The Place in 2016.
The book: Set in 1596, Shakespeare's son Hamnet - whose name inspired the celebrated play - goes in search of help for his gravely ill his twin sister. Their mother is a long way away and their father is away working. Neither parent knows one of the children will not survive the week.
Published 31 March.
Just Like You - Nick Hornby
The author: Hornby is the author of novels including High Fidelity, About a Boy and Funny Girl. His recent marriage break-up novella State of the Union accompanied his BBC TV shorts series. Non-fiction includes Fever Pitch, and he wrote the Oscar-nominated screenplays for An Education and Brooklyn.
The book: As we've come to expect from Hornby, his latest story is both personal and universal. Just Like You gets to the heart of what it means to fall surprisingly and heavily in love with someone who seems totally unsuitable.
Published 17 September.
Strange Hotel - Eimear McBride
The author: McBride made her name with her award-winning debut A Girl is a Half-formed Thing, about a young woman and her complex family relationships. Her follow-up The Lesser Bohemian was about a relationship between a young student and a 38-year-old actor.
The book: Even the plushest hotel room can lack soul, but for the nameless female protagonist, each holds complex memories - many painful. As she travels from country to country and room to room, we discover what has transpired or might transpire within their walls. Will she ever be ready to go home?
Published 6 February.
Contemporary fiction
The Girl with the Louding Voice - Abi Daré
The author: Daré lives in the UK but grew up in Lagos, Nigeria. As a child, she questioned how it was that housemaids in her country were subjected to such desperate lives. She hopes her novel will give her protagonist - and others - the identity and dignity they deserve.
The book: Adunni is a 14-year-old Nigerian who is adamant she wants an education. But her broke father sees her as means to an end - making money. Adunni is sold to an old man. Tragedy then leads to her being secretly sold as a servant to a wealthy Lagos family. Adunni is repeatedly told that she is nothing, but she remains convinced that sheer determination will see her break free.
Published 5 March.
The 24-Hour Cafe - Libby Page
The author: Libby Page's debut novel was the "uplifting" The Lido, about residents who rally together to save their local pool from closure and the land being used for luxury flats. It became a best-seller and is to be made into a film.
The book: Page again focuses on the value of community. Inspired by her local café, Page tells of best friends Hannah and Mona, who are waitressing despite being artistically trained. They may dream of a different life, but around them every type of existence is played out by the individuals who walk through the door.
Published 23 January.
Seven Lies - Elizabeth Kay
The author: Kay started her career as an assistant at Penguin Random House. She is now a commissioning editor who writes in her spare time.
The book: Jane vows to tell you the whole truth about her relationship with her best friend Marnie. They've been very close since children but now their friendship is teetering because of lies told by Jane, one by one increasing in severity as Jane's possessiveness of Marnie turns to obsession. How did things get so bad and where will they end?
Published 16 April.
Saving Missy - Beth Morrey
The author: Morrey is the creative director at RDF Television, where her credits include Channel 4's The Secret Life of Four Year Olds and ITV's 100 Year Old Drivers.
The book: On the eve of her 80th birthday, Missy Carmichael finds herself isolated and desperately lonely. She has no friends and grieves for a family she has lost or alienated - and she knows it's all her own fault. But a chance encounter with two very different women dangles the possibility of a better life - if she will let it happen.
Published 6 February.
Come Again - Robert Webb
The author: Webb is known for his comedy collaborations with David Mitchell on the TV hits Peep Show and That Mitchell and Webb Look. In 2017 he wrote his coming-of-age memoir How Not To Be A Boy, recalling the comedy and tragedy of his early life.
The book: Webb takes on a love story - with a twist. Part Time Traveller's Wife, part Peggy Sue Got Married, it tells of Kate, who's bereft following the death of her love-of-her-life husband Luke. One day she wakes up to find she's 18 again in body but still her more mature self in mind. It's the day she met Luke. Knowing what she does about their future, does she walk away or try to re-enact their story and maybe this time save Luke?
Published 5 March.
Crime and thriller fiction
The Thursday Murder Club - Richard Osman
The author: The all-round mega-brain is the creator and co-presenter of TV quiz show Pointless and has hosted Two Tribes and Richard Osman's House of Games, along with being creative director for TV production company Endemol.
The book: Osman has a fascination with tales of intrigue, so his first novel is a murder mystery in the classic Agatha Christie style - with a tongue-in-cheek tinge of Midsomer Murders thrown in. Take four bored OAPs in an all-too peaceful Kent village who meet each week to "investigate" unsolved murders. But they get a jolt of reality when a real suspicious death lands on their doorstep. Have the foursome got the gumption to solve the crime?
Published 3 September.
The Holdout - Graham Moore
The author: Moore is a New York Times best-selling novelist whose previous works include The Sherlockian and The Last Days of Night. He also won a Golden Globe and an Oscar for best adapted screenplay for The Imitation Game, the film about Alan Turing starring Benedict Cumberbatch.
The book: Moore's story comes from his own experience of being the "holdout" on a jury - the one member who disagrees with all the others. Here the disappearance of a 15-year-old heiress seems cut and dried - her teacher is the villain. But then pipes up juror Maya Seale, who persuades the others to vote not guilty. Scoot forward 10 years and one of the jurors has been found dead, with Maya the prime suspect. But is she being made to pay for her earlier actions?
Published 20 February.
The Recovery of Rose Gold - Stephanie Wrobel
The author: Wrobel hails from Chicago and worked in advertising until she moved to London. She started a creative writing course and by the end of it had completed this book.
The book: The story revolves around the complex Munchausen syndrome by proxy. It follows Rose Gold who, after being poisoned by her mother for 18 years, still decides to take her in after she finishes five years in prison. Mother Patty seems genuinely to want reconciliation. But Rose is not now easily fooled.
Published 5 March.
Historical fiction
Miss Austen - Gill Hornby
The author: The sister of Nick Hornby and wife of novelist Robert Harris, she wrote the best-selling novel The Hive, as well as All Together Now, featuring contemporary stories of groups of women and the emotional politics underpinning their relationships. She also wrote a biography of Jane Austen for children.
The book: Hornby takes the intriguing story of Jane's sister Cassandra, with whom she had a deep and complex relationship. Set in 1840, 23 years after Jane's untimely death, the story focuses on Cassandra's search for a cache of letters written by Jane and which hold secrets Cassandra doesn't want revealed. As she reads them, she pieces together buried truths about her sister. In real life, Cassandra burnt the letters, which has troubled and divided academics to this day. Hornby offers a possible reason why.
Published 23 January.
The Foundling - Stacey Halls
The author: Halls is the author of The Familiars, set in 1600s rural Lancashire. It was imbued with folklore, in particular the legends and fears around witches and the Pendle witch trials of 1612. In her writing, Halls uses true historical events to explore the treatment of women.
The book: It's mid-1700s London. Bess Bright returns to reclaim her illegitimate daughter Clara, who she left at London's Foundling Hospital six years earlier. But Clara has been taken away, and Bess must find her. Meanwhile, a young widow who has not left her house in a decade is persuaded by a doctor from the hospital to hire a nursemaid for her daughter. In doing so, her carefully buried past threatens to resurface and destroy her future.
Published 6 February.
The Ninth Child - Sally Magnusson
The author: The daughter of journalist, historian and Mastermind host Magnus Magnusson, Sally is a broadcaster herself and a familiar face as a former host on BBC Breakfast and Songs of Praise. Her writing includes non-fiction and children's books, and her debut novel was The Sealwoman's Gift, the story of a 17th Century Icelandic woman trafficked to Africa to be a slave.
The book: In 1856, Isabel Aird is pregnant despite having given up hope of becoming a mother. She and her doctor husband move to the Scottish Highlands - also there are Prince Albert and Queen Victoria, who is again pregnant and exhausted by motherhood. Lurking in the shadows is Robert Kirk, a mythical character who is said to stalk the Highlands searching for an innocent soul to swap for his own. Not surprisingly, Robert's sights are on Isabel and Victoria.
Published 19 March.
Celebrity memoirs
Non-fiction
Dear Life: A Doctor's Story of Love and Loss - Rachel Clarke
The author: Clarke gave up a career as a TV journalist to retrain as a doctor. She's now a hospice doctor, specialising in palliative care, and frequently writes about the healthcare system for newspapers. Her previous book was Life in My Hands: A Junior Doctor's Story.
The book: A memoir about caring for people on the edge of death. Though indisputably a time of sorrow, Clarke tries to show that in the face of death can be found the things that really matter in life, including the strength and compassion of which we are all capable.
Published 16 January.
Joy at Work - Marie Kondo
The author: The self-made "tidying consultant" shot to fame with her mantra that a tidy closet leads to a happy life. She wrote the global best-seller The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying and bagged her own Netflix show, Tidying Up with Marie Kondo.
The book: Still feeling out of sorts even though your home is now all boxed and labelled? Well, Marie now suggests your job may be the problem. Written with Scott Sonenshein, an "organisational psychologist", the book espouses re-evaluating the way you work.
Published 7 April.
Slay in Your Lane Presents: Loud Black Girls - Yomi Adegoke and Elizabeth Uviebinené
The authors: Adegoke and Uviebinené wrote the acclaimed Slay In Your Lane: The Black Girls Bible, a "self-help" guide offering black teenagers and women the advice they would have liked to have received themselves.
The book: An anthology featuring essays from established and emerging black British female writers. They were asked to focus on what the future holds - a post-Brexit/Donald Trump world, but one where there is also more opportunity for black women to thrive.
Published 25 June.
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A Flintshire man who appeared in court charged with murdering his two-month-old son has been bailed. | Sean Michael Mullender, 22, from Connah's Quay, was charged on Wednesday following baby Daniel's death in October 2014.
At Mold Crown Court on Thursday, Mr Justice Wyn Williams bailed him on the condition he stays at an address in Northumbria.
Mr Mullender's trial date has been set for next April.
North Wales Police were contacted by health officials after Daniel was admitted to the Countess of Chester Hospital on 2 October.
He was later transferred to Alder Hey Children's Hospital in Liverpool where he died on Saturday 4 October.
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According to the First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, it is "highly likely" that a second referendum on Scottish independence will be held sooner rather than later, following the UK-wide decision to vote to leave the EU contrary to the preference of most Scots. | By John CurticeProfessor of politics at Strathclyde University
That statement means the launch today by the SNP of a somewhat delayed "summer offensive" on independence, an offensive that was initially promised as long ago as last March, has gained an added importance.
It is now potentially a launch pad for a second attempt to persuade a majority of Scots to vote for independence.
One of the implicit assumptions behind Nicola Sturgeon's "highly likely" remark is that enough of those who voted No to independence two years ago are sufficiently unhappy about the prospect of Scotland being required to leave the EU that they would now vote Yes.
But it is far from clear that there has been a post-Brexit increase in support for independence.
Referendum question
Since 23 June five polls have asked people how they would vote now in response to the question that appeared on the September 2014 ballot, "Should Scotland be an independent country?".
Three of these polls were conducted in the immediate wake of the Brexit vote. All three showed a small, but potentially crucial, swing to Yes.
Two were conducted by Survation. In one case 54% said they would vote Yes (after Don't Knows were left to one side), while in the other 53% did so.
When earlier this year Survation had on a number of occasions posed the referendum question, a little less than half - between 47% and 49% - then said they would vote for independence.
The third poll to be conducted soon after 23 June was done by Panelbase. It reported that 52% now backed independence. In polls the company conducted earlier this year it had consistently put support at 47%.
In short, all three of these immediate post-EU referendum polls suggested the Brexit vote had stimulated a small but potentially decisive swing in favour of independence.
Instead of there still being a small majority in favour of remaining in the UK, as most polls had suggested was the case hitherto, there now appeared to be a small majority in favour of independence.
Realistic prospect
If those poll figures were right, there was some realistic prospect that the SNP could win a second referendum, albeit holding such a ballot would still represent a considerable risk for the first minister.
However, two more recent polls, taken after the dust of the EU referendum had settled somewhat, have painted a different picture.
Conducted by YouGov, these polls have found little or no evidence of a swing in favour of independence.
One taken at the end of July put support for independence at 47%, while a second undertaken at the end of last month and published today, puts the figure at 46%.
These figures are more or less exactly in line with four polls YouGov conducted in advance of the Scottish Parliament election in May, all of which put support for independence at 45%-46%.
If these polls are correct then, whatever might have been the immediate reaction to the result of the EU referendum, it appears that over the longer term the outcome has failed to change the balance of opinion on independence after all.
Doubtless the first minister will be looking anxiously to see if any further polls in the coming weeks confirm YouGov's picture.
But at present it looks as though she cannot presume that she will be in a position to hold a successful second independence referendum any time soon.
Consequently, she needs the "summer offensive" being launched today to succeed in persuading more voters of the merits of independence.
To do that, the offensive will need to do more than reiterate the arguments in favour of Scotland staying in the EU.
YouGov's poll in July found that only 18% of those who voted No in the September 2014 referendum said they would rather live in a Scotland that was in the EU but not part of the UK than in a Scotland that was part of the UK but was outside the EU.
Economic case
This suggests that most No voters have a stronger commitment to the Union with the rest of the UK than to the European Union headquartered in Brussels.
The SNP need to focus instead on persuading more voters that the case for independence makes economic sense.
In March this year - when the SNP envisaged Scotland would have become independent if it had voted Yes two years ago - as many as 49% said that they thought Scotland would now be worse off financially if it had voted for independence. Just 22% thought it would be better off.
Crucially, amongst those who voted No in September 2014 only 5% felt the country would now be better off, while as many as 81% reckoned it would be worse off.
The SNP's failure so far to persuade most voters of the economic case for independence is underlined by today's YouGov poll, which finds that as many as 49% believe that Scotland benefits economically from being part of the UK, while just 23% believes being part of the UK is harmful.
Whatever voters feel about the rights and wrongs of the vote on Brexit, persuading a majority of them to vote for independence is always likely to be an uphill task for so long as so many of them are doubtful that the proposition makes economic sense.
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The Jersey Hospitality Association has said it will work hard to reinstate a seafood festival in Gorey.
| The Fete de la Mer had been due to take place at Gorey Pier on 14 May.
But the 2011 event has had to be cancelled because of a lack of funding from sponsors.
The association said events such as the Fete de la Mer, which included traditional sea food, al fresco dining and entertainment, were crucial to the hospitality industry.
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This week a judge decided that a legal case involving ex-Uber drivers could become a joint action - which simply means lots of people who have the same grievance can get together and sue at once. | Dave LeeNorth America technology reporter
The disagreement is over how Uber's drivers are hired by the company.
Uber considers them contractors: they work when they want, for as long as they want. Drivers must pay for their cars, fuel, maintenance - everything.
The alternative - and the one successfully argued in the case - is that Uber drivers should actually be employees. This could mean a heap of benefits: cars provided, holiday pay, perhaps even health insurance.
On the face of it, that sounds like a better deal for drivers. But is it what they want?
Sit and wait
Just down the road from San Francisco's international airport is what can only be described as a holding pen for Uber drivers.
When I visited this week, the car park - which can hold more than 100 cars - was so full they had to close the road leading up to it. Drivers were livid. They're not allowed to wait anywhere else. They certainly can't sit in the taxi rank or they'll get a fine - the driver pays, of course, not Uber.
Those lucky (!) enough to be in the holding pen were in a long queue. Each time a request was made, a car was dispatched. Some had been there for over an hour, they said, with a suspicion that the queue system was broken.
Uber driving is very much a solo pursuit. Unlike cabbies, who have ranks around towns and cities, Uber drivers are normally found cruising around for the next fare. So the holding pen is one of the few places they get to socialise with each other.
Clock in, clock out
Uber's defence in the employee/contractor debate is that its workforce is pretty diverse. Some want to work part-time, others full-time. Some want to work intensely for a few weeks, then take a few weeks off.
It's on their own terms, and Uber says only a contractor set-up makes this possible.
And the vast majority of drivers I spoke to agreed. Passionately.
"If we were employees we'd have to have a boss," said Kirk, a full-time Uber driver for over a year.
"We'd have to clock in, clock out for breaks. It's not a viable solution for what we do.
"You essentially run a small business, but without the overhead of a brick-and-mortar business."
Overhearing our conversation was Nate, who has been an Uber driver for two months, as is his wife, who drove off as I was arriving to go and pick up a passenger. The hours go far more quickly when you're calling your own shots, Nate said.
Driver power
There's more than one exception to the positivity, though, and it's the drivers who've had more than two years on the job who are more keen on the idea of being an employee.
One man - who didn't want to be named as even his family are unaware of his worry - told me that he feels trapped in Uber, caught in a spiral he's not sure how to control.
Like many drivers, he took up Uber's offer of a loan to get a new car. That was in October last year, and it already has 80,000 miles on the clock.
The money for the car is deducted automatically from his earnings each week. It's about $1,000 (£655) a month. It's crippling him - so he works more hours, over 12 a day, putting even more strain on the car.
"I would prefer to be an employee with pay and benefits," he said. "And they could help me look after the car."
The financing plan runs for five years - and he's sure the car won't last that long. New tyres every four months. A new set of brakes. It's all going on credit, and he's running out of options.
"And then Uber drops its rates."
Recently, Uber offered a special deal for trips that went to the East Bay - the stretch of land east of San Francisco, over the water, that includes major cities such as Oakland and Berkeley.
For a limited time, rides to this area were 25% off. It enraged many drivers for whom a trip from the airport to Berkeley (and perhaps back again) is ordinarily a terrific earner - the difference between an average day and a great one.
'Working crazy'
Every driver said they felt they needed better representation, a system that could perhaps give drivers more of a say on how and when to reduce fares. One man, Napoleon, said some drivers could do with support when they feel they have got unfair ratings or other issues that affect their ability to pick up jobs.
And every driver said that as Uber was getting more popular, it was getting harder and harder to earn a living.
"It used to be 10 hours a day," said Nang, from Myanmar, who started Uber driving just over two years ago when she was studying.
"Now I have to work 16 or 17 hours. It's exhausting. I'm thinking of quitting next year. I'm working crazy - seven days.
"They are hiring so many people. I don't know where to go. I was in downtown for one hour and I didn't get a customer. Sometimes [at the airport] I wait two hours."
Uber's rapid growth
Nobody I spoke to said they were considering getting involved in the lawsuit.
Most wouldn't be eligible - Uber thinks only about 15,000 of its 160,000 drivers could qualify - but even if they were, there's little suggestion that many would follow it up.
Being independent for the overwhelming majority of Uber drivers in that blustery car park was what made them sign up in the first place.
But the pressures of covering all the costs, while prices for rides get lower and lower, and more and more Uber cars compete for jobs - it's keeping some drivers awake at night.
Follow Dave Lee on Twitter @DaveLeeBBC
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Rescue efforts are underway in Myanmar's jade-producing area after a landslide killed at least 12 people with fears that there may be as many as 100 others buried under the rubble, local officials have told the BBC. | The disaster happened at Hpakant, a town in the northern state of Kachin.
Billions of dollars of jade are mined in Hpakant each year. Most of it is for the lucrative Chinese market.
However, the industry is unregulated and landslides are common.
Dozens of people were killed by a landslide in the Hpakant area in December and in November more than 100 were killed.
'Many missing' in Myanmar landslide (December 2015)
Dozens missing in Myanmar landslide (November 2015)
Myanmar elite 'profits from jade trade'
Jade mining produces piles of waste rock. Itinerant workers climb the heaps to search for the gem stones left behind by large-scale industrial mining firms.
The BBC's Jonah Fisher in Myanmar says that the exact circumstances of the latest landslide are still emerging - but it is another reminder of just how dangerous the country's jade mines are.
Local police have told the AFP news agency that the rescue effort is continuing. However, it has been hampered by heavy rainfall and poor transport and communication links to the affected area.
Local residents and aid workers say that hundreds of people were searching the deep pits abandoned by the mining firms during Myanmar's rainy season, when most big companies stop operations.
"We think about 200 people were working in that area when the landslide occurred [on Monday] night... There could be many more casualties," a local resident told AFP.
Myanmar - also known as Burma - is the source of nearly all of the world's finest jadeite, a near-translucent green stone known in neighbouring China as the "stone of heaven".
In a report in October, advocacy group Global Witness said the value of jade produced in 2014 alone was $31bn (£21n) - the equivalent of nearly half of Myanmar's GDP - yet hardly any of the money was reaching ordinary people or state coffers.
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Gordon Steele, the chief executive of Guernsey Post, has resigned with immediate effect over a difference of opinion about the company's future.
| Chairman Dudley Jehan said: "The Board and I would like to thank Gordon for the valuable contribution he has made over the last three years.
"We wish him all the very best for the future."
The company described the resignation as "a mutual decision between Mr Steele and the Board".
Boley Smillie has been appointed as the interim chief executive and said the process of selecting a new Chief Executive was likely to take some time.
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Police searching for a missing teenager have found a body in a canal. | Charlie Pope, 19, left the Zombie Shack on New Wakefield Street, Manchester, at 02:30 GMT on Friday. He was last seen on Whitworth Street two hours later.
Following an underwater search in the canal just off Whitworth Street West, a body was found on Friday afternoon.
Police believe the body found is that of the teenager, from Ponteland, Northumberland. There are no suspicious circumstances surrounding the death.
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Youth centres across Warwickshire will close with five kept as centres of excellence, a council has agreed.
| The county council has confirmed it needs to make cuts of £33m in its youth services.
Almost 360 people are employed in the youth sector, and unions have said they fear up to 80% could lose their jobs.
Warwickshire County Council agreed the proposals which see centres in Atherstone, Camp Hill, Lillington, Studley and Nuneaton stay open.
It is hoped that volunteers will step in to help with the remaining 18 youth centres.
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Are you dreaming of a holiday in the Maldives? | Justin RowlattSouth Asia correspondent@BBCJustinRon Twitter
You may want to choose another fantasy destination after the British Foreign Office told tourists to be aware that some political demonstrations in the capital, Malé, have led to violence. It did add, though, that most trips there are trouble-free.
At the end of last month the Maldives celebrated its birthday, 52 years since independence from Britain.
But the festivities were marred when the government ordered troops to storm the country's parliament and prevent opposition MPs from entering.
It was the latest dramatic attempt by President Abdulla Yameen to maintain his grip on power, and the latest twist in a tale of tropical intrigue worthy of a thriller.
The story is certainly set against a suitably exotic backdrop.
Murky politics
The Maldives is justifiably famous for its breathtakingly beautiful beaches and breathtakingly expensive luxury hotels.
But while the water of the coral reefs that surround them may be crystal clear, politics in the so-called "island paradise" has always been very murky indeed.
The political drama is centred, not on the beaches but on Malé, the tiny, urbanised island where all of the Maldives' major institutions are based and which is one of the most densely populated cities on Earth.
For 30 years the country was a corrupt autocracy, ruled with the proverbial "iron fist" by Maumoon Abdul Gayoom.
President Gayoom shrugged off numerous coup attempts during his three decades in power, but the wily tactician could not resist forever the growing demand for democratic reform.
In 2008, a charismatic young progressive, Mohamed Nasheed, swept to power in the country's first democratic elections.
He rolled back repressive laws, bolstered democratic institutions and captured the world's attention with an underwater cabinet meeting to highlight the risks of rising sea levels.
But the Maldives' brief moment as a model Islamic democracy was not to last.
Spectacular falling out
Less than four years later, Mr Nasheed resigned following a mutiny by the police and weeks of demonstrations after the arrest of the chief justice, something he now calls a coup.
In November 2013, Mr Yameen took office, but as he is Mr Gayoom's half-brother, it looked like a return to the old order.
However, over the last year the two strongmen have had a spectacular falling out.
So much so that Mr Gayoom, the grizzled old dictator, has thrown in his lot with the dashing young democrat, Mr Nasheed.
To give you an idea of just how improbable this union is, you should know that Mr Nasheed was imprisoned and tortured during Mr Gayoom's rule.
Nevertheless these unlikely allies have prospered and - bolstered by defections from the ruling party - the opposition has managed to gain a small majority in the Maldivian parliament.
They had a plan - to stage a coup, but a democratic one.
They tabled a no-confidence vote against the speaker of the country's parliament.
The idea was to replace him and his deputy with opposition figures, who would lead an emergency government until elections early next year.
It looked likely to work, until, that is, Mr Yameen literally called in the troops.
They barred opposition MPs from entering parliament for the vote, thereby putting paid to the plotters' plans.
Strategic importance
Since then Mr Yameen has been trying to strip the opposition of its majority, arresting MPs and ruling that defectors must resign their seats.
It has been enough to allow him to cling on to power, for the moment at least.
If you are wondering why on earth you should care about this sun-soaked soap opera, you need to see the wider picture - because the Maldives is at the centre of a much bigger strategic power play.
The country's more than 1,000 islands stretch 800km (500 miles) into the Indian Ocean.
They straddle crucial sea-lanes, notably the busy but prosaically named bottleneck, the "One and a Half Degree Channel".
It makes the Maldives a pawn in the great game for regional influence being played out between India and China, the outcome of which may influence the shape of the world economy for years to come.
But there are more basic principles at stake here too - human rights and the rule of democracy.
And they matter just as much in small nations with great beaches like the Maldives, as they do anywhere else in the world.
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Donald Trump's visit to the World Economic Forum in Davos was billed as a showdown between the sophisticated "global elites" who attend in droves, and the baseball-cap wearing president's brash "America First" rhetoric. | By Katie Hope and Joe MillerBBC News, Davos
Yet mention his name in the bustling foyer of the Congress Centre, and the reaction is surprisingly benign.
Many attendees shrug indifferently, rather than launch into an angry rant.
'Every leader should have their shot'
Gabrielle Bacon, who lives in the US, says she gets to listen to President Trump a lot at home, and is not remotely excited about his Davos appearance.
Her main interest is in the European leaders who have spoken here, such as French President Emmanuel Macron and Italy's Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni.
She predicts, however, that his speech may not go down well, saying that President Trump is sometimes misunderstood in Europe.
"He doesn't talk in the same way as the European leaders and I think that's very confusing to people," she explains.
Keen to clarify that she's not defending Donald Trump, Mrs Bacon says that his much-touted "America First" message is seen by some in the US as wanting the best for citizens there, but it doesn't mean that he doesn't want good things for other countries too.
Nonetheless, she's glad he's come: "Every leader should have their shot up there".
'Personally, I'm not a fan'
Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim, co-ordinator for the Association for Indigenous Women and Peoples of Chad, thinks the president's visit is drawing attention away from more respected attendees.
"Personally, I'm not a fan, I am not going to be here to listen to what he is going to say," she says.
"What Justin [Trudeau] and Macron and the president of WEF said, those are the words of politicians who resonated in my head, and who are are calling on people to collaborate, to come together, to respect women's rights, to change the economy, to respect the environment - what is [Trump] going to say that is better than what they said?"
Ms Ibrahim, who first came to Davos a year ago, says Donald Trump's profanity-laden comments about immigrants from countries like hers have not been forgotten.
"I am still shocked by what he said last week about African and Caribbean countries," she says.
"I don't want to waste my time or energy thinking about [Trump]"
'It will not help in our relations with the Palestinians'
Some delegates are reluctant to put their views of Trump's visit on record, and privately have reservations about whether his arrival, along with the biggest ever US government delegation in WEF's 48-year history, will achieve much beyond generating headlines.
"I think it's very good that he's coming, because he has to be exposed to what is going on in the world," says one Israeli financier.
Not that the exposure will mean much, he adds.
"He's driven by something else," the man, on his fourth trip to WEF, says.
"He's coming to calm down the world, but then somebody will [annoy] him the day after tomorrow, and he will tweet it all around the world, and that's it."
Donald Trump has extended a hand to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whom he met at Davos, by promising to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, recognising the latter as Israel's capital.
But the Israeli delegate we spoke to thinks this move is counter-productive, especially for those representing his country on the "Magic Mountain".
"It will not help in our relations with the Palestinians, and we are coming here to build it up, we want to talk, we want to get a solution."
'We will welcome him'
Chinese delegate Layla Dong, is adamant that inviting Donald Trump to Davos was the right thing to do.
"It's an open platform, we will welcome him because he's the president of the United States," she explains.
"The Forum is all about being a platform for people to communicate, so we are open to everybody, and if one day, the leader of North Korea wants to come to the Forum, they should also be welcomed".
Yet Ms Dong, who has been coming to Davos for three years, is sceptical about whether Mr Trump will say much worthy of note.
On her phone, she points to a response to Trump's tweet on Thursday, announcing that he was heading to Davos to "tell the world how great America is and is doing."
The riposte reads: "It's only a few days after your first government shutdown, and you're going to Switzerland to lecture other countries on how they run their governments. You're funny."
"I agree with this guy," she says.
'We're all equal here'
Andrea Bandelli is chief executive of Science Gallery International, a group which works to engage young people with science.
He isn't planning to listen to President Trump due to other meetings that clash with the speech.
But he's still glad that Mr Trump decided to come, saying the whole point of the World Economic Forum is that everybody should be invited.
For all attendees here, he says, how much they get out of it depends on how well they listen and how much empathy they have.
His hope is that President Trump's visit will be "a constructive one rather than a destructive one".
Mr Bandelli notes that the point of the Forum is to bring everyone together, and that "no one comes here with a reason that is higher than anybody else's".
"We're all equal here and that's how we are treated," he says.
But might President Trump, who is not known for his humility, find that rather difficult?
"There is always a chance that everybody is changed for the better after attending the annual meeting," he quips.
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In comparative terms, Shetland had one of the highest losses of life in World War One. The conflict had a huge impact on the population that made up the towns and villages of the islands, which can at times seem apart from the rest of the UK. | By Daniel BennettBBC Scotland
According to the 1911 census, Shetland had a total population of 27,911. Of this population, more than 600 servicemen died in the war.
But according to local historian and history teacher Jon Sandison "the total of the war memorial and the Roll of Honour is closer to 700".
This loss of life, in proportion, is considered one of the largest for any area of the UK.
John Taylor, a former serviceman living in Shetland, said: "Throughout the country, 1 in 45 people were lost, but in Shetland it was about 1 in 38. Percentage-wise, the loss here was greater than the rest of the UK."
'Decimated by war'
Bobby Hunter, Lord Lieutenant of Shetland, said: "It still leaves an effect. Folk still talk about folk who were lost in the First World War.
"I had my own grandfather and grand-uncle, two brothers, who were lost. It still affects folk to this day."
The War Memorial in Lerwick was unveiled in January 1924 by Janet Hardy.
Her family experienced the pain that war inflicts perhaps more keenly than any other family in Shetland. Three of her sons, Thomas, Charles, and William, went to war. None returned.
Thomas died when the ship he was serving on in Penzance sank in 1916. Charles died in November 1914 from wounds sustained in Ypres. William died in Calcutta in 1917 from drowning. As Mr Taylor said: "A lot of families were decimated by the war."
There were, however, positive stories; stories of brothers surviving the war gave people hope.
The Cluness family ended up sending five sons to the war. Remarkably, all five came back.
What did Shetland contribute?
Despite its distance from mainland UK, Shetland was active in sustaining and supporting the war effort, in inventive and innovative ways.
Knitting in the Shetland Islands has for centuries been a practical pursuit. Due to the often harsh weather, making use of wool has been necessary for survival.
Those knitting skills were underlined and put to the test in World War One.
Thousands of women from across the Shetland Islands produced various types of knitted goods for troops.
They were part of the Queen Mary's Needlework Guild. Its aim was to provide clothes and knitted goods to servicemen. And Shetland women did just that, producing more than 15,000 knitted items.
Their efforts did not go unnoticed. After the war, thousands of soldiers sent letters of thanks to those women who had provided them with clothes to help them see out cold winters.
This was just one way Shetlanders used wildlife and nature to pitch in with the war effort.
The 'Egg Collection for the Wounded' campaign aimed to distribute eggs from towns and parishes across the UK to the war wounded, often in hospitals.
About 32 million eggs were sent to feed wounded soldiers in areas of France and Belgium. Shetland contributed a total of 300,000 eggs for the effort.
One more contribution from the Shetland Islands is perhaps more surprising - moss.
The contribution of sphagnum moss was classed as "significant", with the plant material being used for "surgical dressings" due to its antiseptic qualities, making it a first aid essential.
Days were especially organised so that locals could go out to gather moss.
Mr Sandison said: "There was a moss day in August 1917. People went to the hillsides and collected 2,500 bags of moss. The following year they sent 3,000 bags."
Those 5,500 bags of moss were sent to help wounded soldiers.
What happened then?
The 1911 census also revealed that Shetland had a majority female population - a majority of about 2,500.
Mr Hunter explained: "The women were left at home with the families. They had to work on the crofts so they were left with the heavy end of the stick when the men were away."
They were affected by men being away and from the toll of those who did not return - and the whole of Shetland was impacted through that generation and beyond.
Mr Sandison added: "Overall, most men did come home. But, when they did come home, they had to fit back into society.
"A lot were affected for the rest of their lives and their family had to deal with that
"The loss was very large for women. We often speak about the 'Lost Generation'.
"Perhaps there was another lost generation; the families who went through that and those who were left at home."
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| By Andy McFarlaneBBC News
Testing times
Health Secretary Matt Hancock's pledge to ensure 100,000 people a day are tested for coronavirus by the end of the month might have sounded significant but it has raised questions about how the government will meet the target. Labour says details are scant. Shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth wants to know how many of the 100,000 would be blood tests, and what role testing would play in the government's lockdown "exit strategy".
Academics warn testing is not a "magic bullet" and caution against creating a "false sense of security" with talk of "immunity certificates" when the science is unproven. Health correspondent Nick Triggle assesses the government's performance against its pledges on testing, protective equipment for NHS staff and provision of ventilators for seriously ill patients.
Meanwhile, the battle to preserve the health of the economy continues, with the government revamping its emergency loans scheme to make it easier for struggling businesses to access funds and bailing out the bus industry to keep routes open.
For a second week, the nation honoured its key workers with applause on Thursday evening. One of them, Dr John Wright of Bradford Royal Infirmary, writes for us about the pressure NHS staff feel now they are dealing with multiple patient deaths.
Grim statistics
As our live page notes, the US and Spain have recorded new highs for daily deaths of patients with Covid-19. To get an idea of the pressures medical teams are under, watch American nurse Tre Kwon's powerful account of cutting short her maternity leave to return to the frontline, and see the conditions in an intensive care unit in the Spanish region of Catalonia.
More than a million cases have now been confirmed worldwide, with nearly 53,000 people dying and more than 210,000 having recovered, according to Johns Hopkins University, in the US. We look at the handful of countries yet to declare a positive case, and the steps they are taking to try to stay virus-free.
Get news from the BBC in your inbox, each weekday morning
Questions and answers
If you're confused about the kind of shopping classed as "essential", you're not alone, as reporter Cherry Wilson discovered. In our latest explainers, we examine what it means - in practical terms - to be furloughed, and answer your questions about the outbreak, on subjects such as whether you can walk the dog or what policies exist on birthing partners.
Remember, there's lots of information and advice on our dedicated page.
What does 'from Russia with love' really mean?
By BBC News Russian, Moscow
Russia's latest gesture in the coronavirus crisis came in the form of medical supplies arriving in New York - part of an operation dubbed "from Russia with love" by the Kremlin. In late March a similar cargo was flown to Italy - the worst-hit country in the crisis - along with 100 Russian military medics.
Russian media speak of widespread gratitude for this generosity, but how much of that is fact, how much fiction? US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tweeted that the US had paid for the Russian supplies, and that "we have to work together to defeat #COVID19". The Russian foreign ministry says the US paid for half of the supplies, and the other half was donated by Russia.
Read the full article
One thing not to miss today
How the UK's newest hospital was built in nine days
Listen up
Science in Action, on the World Service, examines whether lessons from west Africa's Ebola crisis can help in the current situation. Meanwhile, the Coronavirus Newscast assesses the government's chances of meeting its latest pledge to test 100,000 people a day by the end of April.
What the papers say
Coronavirus testing continues to dominate front pages. Every NHS worker forced to self-isolate has been promised a test by the end of April, notes the Times. Mr Hancock has staked the government's reputation on the commitment to test 100,000 people per day by then, which is four times more than health chiefs previously said was possible, according to the Daily Telegraph. However, the Guardian warns the so-called "immunity passports" and antibody tests the government is relying on remain unproven. And the Sun pictures an empty testing site in Surrey, while reporting that swabs are being sent to Germany for analysis. Things have gone from "bad to wurst", suggests its headline.
From elsewhere
Boris Johnson is looking for a lockdown exit strategy, But ministers and experts disagree on how to do it (Buzzfeed)
Details of Nightingale Hospital's clinical model revealed (Health Service Journal)
'War doctor' says treating Covid-19 is like fighting an invisible enemy (NPR)
Eddie Large obituary (Guardian)
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Need something different?
Peer into the past via newly discovered "forbidden footage" of the UK's World War Two codebreakers relaxing. Cameras were banned from the site of their secret operations in Buckinghamshire, and the film was anonymously donated to the Bletchley Park Trust. You can test your knowledge of events over the past seven days with our quiz of the week's news or - if sport is your thing - visit at 20:00 GMT to take part in the inaugural Quarantine Quiz. If you simply fancy wrapping yourself in the warm fuzz of nostalgia, delve into the BBC Archive to relive the time Blue Peter's Shep the dog met R2D2, of Star Wars fame, 42 years ago today.
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The first of a series of events to mark 100 years since Sir Kyffin Williams' birth will get under way on Saturday. | An exhibition at Oriel Mon, in the artist's hometown of Llangefni, Anglesey, starts on Saturday and runs until 1 July.
Oriel Mon is home to more than 400 of Williams' paintings and works.
Sir Kyffin, who died aged 88 in September 2006, is widely regarded as the defining artist of Wales during the 20th century.
Further events will take place throughout the year across Wales, as well as in London and China.
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The States has been asked for £3.25m for a new radar at Guernsey Airport, on top of the £80m pounds already earmarked for the runway redevelopment. | The current radar is approaching the end of its operational life and funding for a new one will be debated by the States in December.
The Public Services Department said a new radar was vital to the airport's efficient operation.
If approved the radar would be installed in about a year's time.
The £80m redevelopment project, which includes moving the runway, changes to the drainage system, new landing lights and navigational aids as well as the resurfacing of the aprons and taxiways, has been agreed and is due to take two years to complete.
Public Services said the airport contributed about £30m a year to Guernsey's economy.
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Once British sailors were a big part of the whaling industry in the southern hemisphere. Now only rusting buildings and ship skeletons remain, where once thriving whaling stations were, writes Adam Nicholson. | The abandoned whaling station at Leith Harbour on South Georgia in the south Atlantic looks as if it has been bombed. Rusty steel chimneys lie collapsed across the roadways.
Power plants and dormitory blocks lie half-smashed, their innards spilling out through the walls - cast-iron beds and baths, piping and wiring, cushions and mattresses all now leaking into the freezing air. Some of the huge steel cylinders of the whale oil tanks, 30ft high and 30ft across, have had their sides folded in, as if by a giant hand. But these are just the effects of time and the brutal winds of the Southern Ocean.
It is not somewhere you would ever like to be alone. The winds that hurl off the mountains of this sub-Antarctic island, 800 miles east of the Falklands, on the same latitude as Cape Horn, make the whole place creak and groan. Rusted corrugated sheets screech against their fixings, doors slam open and shut, the ventilator cowls on the giant processor plants still turn in the wind as they have done since the place was finally abandoned and left to the elements in 1965.
No-one is there now because Leith Harbour, like most of the other whaling stations on South Georgia, is strictly off-limits. The collapsing structures are too dangerous and the asbestos in which the whale processing machinery is still wrapped makes the enclosed places too toxic. The South Georgia government - this is one of Britain's few remaining overseas territories - had to give us permission to film in this breathtaking time-capsule of a forgotten way of British life. And we had to be accompanied by Tommy Moore, a Yorkshireman familiar with asbestos safety, and dressed in full protective gear.
Pick your way through the buildings now and you find yourself in a forgotten world - mounds of harpoon heads lying rusted together, whale ribs and scapulae everywhere, abandoned tractors and rusted lathes. In the manager's villa, graffiti tells of Argentine joy in 1982 at recovering their own, every word of it covered with the unequivocal responses of the crews of Royal Navy ships who arrived a few weeks later.
Snow clogs the doorways of the cinema where the whalers used to watch over and over again the few films they had, the dust-filled hall still filled with memories of Elizabeth Taylor and Deborah Kerr. The hospital still has unopened bottles of milk of magnesia and tins of Prickly Heat Powder on the shelves of its half-trashed pharmacy. Stinking fur seals lurk in the radio shack and among the overturned benches of the canteen. In the dormitories, the whalers' pin-ups still smile winsomely from the walls. Hidden in attic spaces you can find the bowls, ladles and tins of yeast with which the whalers made the fearsome hooch to console themselves on long winter evenings 8,000 miles from home.
The whole place is a monument to a huge and massively destructive episode in British history. By the beginning of the 20th Century, whaling had virtually eliminated the stocks of whales in much of the northern hemisphere. Europe had a growing appetite for the oils that whales could provide - most of it for margarine and soap - and the vast stormy waters of the Southern Ocean beckoned, teeming with krill and with the whales that fed on it.
Almost entirely fuelled by British finance, the whalers came south and embarked on a bonanza that lasted for two-thirds of the century. Individual whalers made the kind of money they could only have dreamed of at home. A young man returning to Shetland or the Hebrides in the 1950s after 18 months "at the ice" could buy a house, start a business or commission a fishing boat on his earnings.
Christian Salvesen, the Edinburgh-based whaling company that built Leith Harbour, could hope in some years for 100% dividend on their investment. At the peak of the business in the 1920s, Salvesen's were making the equivalent £100m a year in profit in today's money.
None of it was easily earned. The conditions were brutal. Ice often clogged the rigging and individual catching boats were known to founder in the steep seas of the southern ocean. Earnings were dependent on the number of whales caught and the skipper-gunners drove boats and crews relentlessly.
When the enormous bodies of the whales were hauled ashore into the huge processing plants, an army of men got to work, working 12-hour shifts, stripping the blubber from the carcasses, "like peeling a banana", as the whalers all say, shovelling the meat into the giant cookers, cutting up the bones with enormous steam saws and boiling them up for the oil they contained.
An entire whale, the size of a railway carriage, could be disposed of in 20 minutes. If newly caught, there were consolations: "You could warm your hands in the fresh blood," Jock Murray, a whaler from the Hebrides remembers. "If it was a week old, that was something else."
It is difficult to recover the frame of mind in which the destruction of so many of the greatest animals on earth seemed like a good idea. About 1.6 million whales were killed in the Southern Ocean in about six decades. The whalers remain deeply ambivalent about it today. Many say they are proud to have done it but wouldn't do it now.
There are other ways, largely through plant extracts, of getting equivalents of the oils once taken from the whales. But, as one of the whalers, John Alexander, says: "We thought we were doing some good for the country." They were garnering fats which Britain desperately needed, particularly in the years after World War Two. It was a difficult task, at which they became immensely skilled. And as boys from crofts or fishing families in marginal parts of Scotland, they were providing for themselves in a way little else could have.
Even so, there is some pain in the memory. "When we killed the sei whales," Roddy Morrison, from Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, remembers, "they used to make a noise, like a crying noise. They seemed so friendly, and they'd come round and they'd make a noise, and when you hit them, they cried really.
"I didn't think it was really nice to do that. Everybody talked about it at the time I suppose, but it was money. At the end of the day that's what counted at the time. That's what we were there for."
Britain's Whale Hunters: The Untold Story, presented by Adam Nicholson, is broadcast on BBC Four on Monday 9 June at 21:00
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A petition calling for a school swimming pool to remain open throughout the year has been handed to Guernsey's Education Department.
| Hautes Capelles Primary School pool is due to shut for six months of the year as part of closures at most primary schools under cost-saving plans.
Margaret Honey, who runs a swimming school, said it would damage children's swimming skills and ruin her business.
The petition with 916 signatures was handed to the education minister.
Last month the department announced the change to swimming pool opening times to save £100,000 a year.
It is one of the savings identified by the department, which has been tasked with saving £7.2m by 2014 as part of the financial transformation programme, a States-wide savings project.
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Lee Child has had the kind of success most authors can only fantasise about. He's written 23 thrillers featuring American hero Jack Reacher - with total sales of at least 100 million copies worldwide. He's just been named author of the year at the British Book Awards. And if he hadn't lost his job in TV none of it would have happened. | By Vincent DowdArts reporter, BBC News
Lee Child - born Jim Grant in Coventry in 1954 - says he grew up reading exactly what an average British boy would read in the 1960s.
"I'm not one of these guys who claim they read Dostoevsky when they were seven. I started with Enid Blyton and then the Biggles books by Captain W.E. Johns and later it was Ian Fleming. Alistair MacLean probably made the biggest impression on me with stories like Where Eagles Dare. All very normal stuff for a kid of my generation.
"Back then everything was so unstructured compared to the modern world of online book groups and suggestions for further reading. I sort of miss the chaotic days of random discovery."
When he was four the family moved to Birmingham. After university in Sheffield Jim Grant worked at Granada TV in Manchester, making countless trails and writing presentation links. "Most media people have lived and worked in London but I never did."
But as he neared 40 his job at Granada disappeared. He needed an income fast. Necessity proved the making of Lee Child, literally.
"I had never tried to write anything of length," he says. "Often at Granada I was writing scripts of three or four words. I completely admire people who combine writing with a day job because that would have been very hard for me. The first Jack Reacher story (Killing Floor) was written in Kirby Lonsdale in Cumbria which is as far away from America as you can imagine."
That first attempt began on 1 September and even now he always starts his annual round of writing on the same date.
Jack Reacher is 6'5" tall and a man without ties: he wanders America as a sort of freelance righter of wrongs, bringing justice to a world where it's in short supply. Reacher's a former military policeman but has no permanent occupation. "In some ways he shouldn't appeal: he's a rough tough guy and he can be brutal. But there was always a sort of organic honesty about him which people liked."
Reacher's adventures quickly found an audience. Child's evident mastery of what readers want has since bought him homes on Central Park West in Manhattan and in Wyoming.
Even pre-Reacher did he always love the US and know he might one day live there?
"The first time I went to America was 1974, 20 years before I started writing. I think what appealed was its size. You couldn't have a Jack Reacher who came from Surrey. I needed the vast, vast landscapes and the sense of lost, secret towns which no one has visited for years. It wouldn't work if Reacher came from Guildford.
"Often people really only know the two coasts of America. But the interior truly fascinated me. Just occasionally an American will say why is this Brit trying to tell us about our country? Usually I find I've been to far more states than they have and I've listened more."
But Child is also wary of too detailed research into the world he writes about. "You need to throw away 90%. The last story (Past Tense) was set in New Hampshire but I didn't research by going there: often it's more a memory of a place you visited years ago." The next Reacher book, Blue Moon, is set in an amalgam of two cities in south-east USA but he won't say which.
"I have a sympathy for the places that are disregarded or left behind or forgotten. In America often that came about when the interstate highways were built in the 1950s and hundreds and hundreds of towns were just bypassed. They either dried up and blew away completely or sometimes they survive but just as a shell of their former selves. That can be where you find the fascinating stuff."
He's not a political analyst but does he ever consider that the places Jack Reacher mainly visits tend now to make up the Trump-voting heartland?
"I do sometimes comment on politics obliquely. Reacher's a tough character who will have an organic appeal for the Trump voter. I use him to poke and prod them a little bit. People in the American interior can have a complex about being there.
"I've been travelling around America for 45 years and I've always loved it. I've come to the conclusion that the true split in America - socially, politically and in every way - is very basic. It's between areas of low population density and high population density.
"My adopted state of Wyoming is the size of the UK but it probably has the population of Leicester. The two versions of America are so radically different that it really does explain the divide you see now in politics."
Child says he wants to explain the attitudes of the people in the middle to the people on the US coasts. "But also the other way round because they never really see eye to eye. I've spoken to a lot of Americans and I listen wherever they are and whatever their politics. Almost always they're very generous people."
There were two Reacher films, in 2012 and 2016, starring Tom Cruise. No follow-ups are planned although there's talk of a possible TV series with a different lead actor, possibly taller.
The producers will need to dramatise on screen the scenes of harsh violence which form an essential part of the stories' success with readers.
"People live with this low-level buzz of frustration, especially when it comes to crime and justice. In most places if your car gets stolen the police will never catch the guys. So people want to turn to fiction where there's a beginning and a middle and an end and absolutely the bad guys will get caught and punished.
"People want order restored and they can't get it in the real world but they can get it in the fictional realm. It's a tremendous consolation and it's a big part of what Reacher does in the books."
Lee Child is so productive that talking to him it's hard not to stray into his next book and the one after that. Blue Moon will appear in October but by then he'll already be at work on Reacher 25.
"By August there should be an opening line in my mind or maybe even an opening paragraph. Then it's important to me to sit down on 1 September and start the actual writing: it gives a structure to my year which I think you need if you're self-employed.
"Sometimes the story develops quite slowly and by January 2020 probably I'll be getting worried that I'm drying up and not enough is written. So I put myself under more pressure and tell myself it needs to be done by March. Though usually it becomes April. But sitting here in May 2019 genuinely I haven't the faintest idea where Jack Reacher will be or what he'll be doing next time."
Though seeking justice for the disregarded or left behind or forgotten will surely be in there somewhere.
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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The Nigerian government has announced a takeover of the country's biggest airline - Arik Air - to prevent it going bust. But this is just the latest example of problems in Nigeria's aviation industry, reports the BBC's Martin Patience from Lagos. | By Martin PatienceBBC News, Lagos
The government agency (Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria) now responsible for supervising the airline said the decision was made to "instill sanity in the country's aviation sector and to prevent a major catastrophe."
Customer service at Arik Air is at times non-existent. When the airline cancels a flight, most of the time its ground staff flee rather than deal with the fallout from irate passengers.
As the company's troubles mounted at the end of last year, 70% of its international flights were delayed.
The firm's staff bear the brunt for an airline that even by Nigerian standards is a byword for utter dysfunction. Last month the company was forced to issue a plea for passengers not to attack its employees.
How to survive the chaos
The government agency that pushed the airline into receivership reeled off an astonishing rap sheet of Arik's alleged offences - enormous debt, bad governance, and "erratic operational challenges."
As Nigeria's biggest airline, the government decided that it could not allow the company to collapse.
But to fly Arik often means never getting off the ground.
I was at Enugu airport when I was told my flight was cancelled. The man beside me at the check-in desk just shook his head - all his flights had been cancelled for the past two days.
To survive Nigerian air travel means coming up with new strategies.
First, find the most reliable airline and stick with it. And, if possible, take the first flight in the morning as it's normally guaranteed to go on time (give or take an hour.)
Delays become compounded throughout the day as most airlines operate a shuttle service. So a good bet is that a mid-afternoon flight will probably turn into early evening flight. Passengers normally only miss their flight if it actually leaves on time.
Nobody wants to spend too much time at the airports here. Port Harcourt was named the world's worst in 2015.
Generally speaking, though, I've always felt pretty safe on flights apart from after a rocky landing when several of the overhead luggage bins burst open.
To be fair to the airlines, Nigeria is not the easiest place to operate. International carriers face huge issues repatriating their profits as they can't get their hands on dollars because of Nigeria's current economic crisis.
The dollar shortage has also led to aviation fuel shortages causing massive disruption in the past few months.
Capital's airport to close
The latest major inconvenience facing the traveller to Nigeria is the closure of Abuja's airport for six weeks starting from next month while major repairs are carried out on its runway. At least one airline has damaged its landing gear on the pot-holed tarmac.
With the capital's only airport shut down, the government is going to reroute flights to an airport in the nearby city of Kaduna.
The small airport there currently handles just 300 passengers a day compared to the 5,000 who pass through Abuja's terminal. Many predict chaos.
Travelling to the capital from Kaduna will also involve a two-hour journey along a road that has been hit by a spate of kidnappings. The government is promising to put on extra security.
Unsurprisingly, several international airlines have already announced they will not being flying into Kaduna, although direct flights to Lagos, Kano or Port Harcourt will continue.
There are, however, a few perks about air travel in Nigeria: Free snacks onboard; unbelievably cheap excess baggage and the fact that you can board with as much carry-on luggage as you can actually carry on.
Also, during a year's travel in Nigeria, my bags have always arrived on time, which is more than I can say for British airports.
And despite the immense frustrations, I frequently strike up conversations with complete strangers.
Delayed Nigerians can make for great company while waiting at the airport.
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India is in full election mode: voting began on 11 April, and the final ballot will be cast on 19 May with results out on 23 May. Every day, the BBC will be bringing you all the latest updates on the twists and turns of the world's largest democracy. | On Friday, PM Modi held his first press conference...sort of
What happened?
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi attended his first ever press conference at the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) head office in Delhi - days before Indians took part in the final stage of voting.
But journalists were left disappointed as he did not take any questions, and instead largely talked about his government's achievements.
"I have come to thank the country for blessing me. I have seen a lot of ups and downs but the country stayed with me," he said.
Mr Modi was seated next to party president Amit Shah. He said he would not take questions because the press conference was Mr Shah's.
Earlier, the prime minister said he would "never be able to forgive" those who have "insulted" Mahatma Gandhi.
Mr Modi's statement comes after controversial Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) politician Pragya Thakur called Nathuram Godse - the man who assassinated Mahatma Gandhi - a "patriot".
Ms Thakur apologised after several leaders, including those from the BJP, criticised her.
"Such statements should be condemned. There is no place in society for such comments. She [Ms Thakur] may have apologised, but I will never be able to forgive her," he said in an interview to News24 TV channel.
Why does this matter?
This is the first time Mr Modi attended a press conference as prime minister while in India. Most of his press conferences have been on state visits to other countries and often involved little more than reading out an official statement.
He has given some one-on-one interviews to Indian media, though critics say that these have largely been tightly controlled and given to journalists seen as sympathetic to him. However in recent weeks he has given a flurry of interviews to several leading publications and television channels, including those that have been critical of him.
But if people were expecting a complete about-turn in his media policy this time, they would have been disappointed.
This caused some frustration among journalists on Twitter.
Also on Friday, a BJP candidate apologised for calling Gandhi's killer a patriot
What happened?
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) politician Pragya Thakur apologised after calling Nathuram Godse - the man who assassinated Mahatma Gandhi - a "patriot".
Several political parties had criticised her comment and her own party demanded that she publicly apologise.
"It was my personal opinion. My intention was not to hurt anyone's sentiments. If I've hurt anyone, I do apologise. What Gandhi Ji has done for the country cannot be forgotten. My statement has been twisted by the media," Ms Thakur said on Thursday evening.
She made the comment after actor-turned politician Kamal Haasan said Godse was India's first Hindu "extremist" earlier this week.
Why does this matter?
The BJP as well as opposition parties immediately reacted to her comment, which also caused a storm on social media.
BJP spokesperson GVL Narasimha Rao said that the party does not agree with her statement, and asked her to publicly apologise.
The main opposition Congress party demanded an apology from Prime Minister Narendra Modi and said that the BJP should take "punitive action" against Ms Thakur.
Congress spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said that "insulting martyrs is in the BJP DNA" and that the "soul of the nation" had been hurt by her remarks.
Congress party leader Priyanka Gandhi also lashed out at the BJP.
Political analysts said that her comments have put the BJP in a tough spot, since Mr Modi and BJP president Amit Shah defended their decision to field her as a candidate despite terror charges against her.
Her candidature caused outrage as she is an accused of involvement in a blast that killed seven people and injured 100 others. Ms Thakur denies all charges against her.
However, Ms Thakur's comments reflect the views of some right-wing Hindus who support the BJP and have long seen Gandhi as too moderate.
Godse, who shot Gandhi in the chest three times at point-blank range on 30 January 1948, was also an activist with nationalist right-wing groups, including those closely associated with the BJP.
Hindu hardliners in India accuse Gandhi of having betrayed Hindus by being too pro-Muslim, and even for the division of India and the bloodshed that marked Partition, which saw India and Pakistan created after independence from Britain in 1947.
On Thursday, a ruling party candidate called Gandhi's killer a patriot....
What happened?
Controversial Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) politician Pragya Thakur made headlines again. This time it was for calling Nathuram Godse - the man who assassinated Mahatma Gandhi - a "patriot".
Her comment was made in response to a statement by southern actor-turned politician Kamal Haasan who had said India's first "extremist" was a Hindu", referring to Godse.
His statement, made on Monday, was heavily criticised by the BJP, which accused him of indulging in "divisive politics" and filed a complaint against him with the Election Commission of India.
Why does this matter?
The BJP responded by criticising Ms Thakur and asking her to publicly apologise.
"BJP does not agree with this statement, we condemn it. Party will ask her for clarification, she should apologise publicly for this statement," party spokesperson GVL Narasimha Rao told reporters.
Ms Thakur has seen her fair share of controversy. Her candidature caused outrage as she is an accused of involvement in a blast that killed seven people and injured 100 others. On 18 April, she said that police officer Hemant Karkare had died in the November 2008 Mumbai terror attacks because she had "cursed" him. She was then banned from campaigning for 72 hours as a result.
A team led by Mr Karkare had arrested her for questioning in connection with the Malegaon blast.
During her campaign, she also said she was "proud" of her part in the demolition of the 16th Century Babri mosque. In 1992, right-wing Hindu mobs razed the mosque to the ground, claiming it was built on the site of a temple destroyed by Muslim rulers. The site, which is in the city of Ayodhya, has been a religious flashpoint for Hindus and Muslims for decades.
And campaigning ended in West Bengal a day before deadlinec
What happened?
The Election Commission (EC) told political parties to end their campaigning in West Bengal state, a day before the deadline in the wake of poll-related violence.
The campaign ended on Thursday at 10pm local time, and voting was held on Sunday.
The decision came after clashes broke out between the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) workers and protesters believed to be from the state's governing Trinamool Congress (TMC) in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) on Tuesday.
It happened during a roadshow of BJP chief Amit Shah. Several people were injured and vehicles were set on fire. A statue of renowned Bengali reformer Iswarchandra Vidyasagar was also vandalised in the clashes.
Both parties accused each other of starting the violence.
Why does this matter?
The BJP welcomed the decision, saying it validated their argument that the state had "descended into anarchy" under the leadership of chief minister Mamata Banerjee.
Ms Banerjee said that the move was "undemocratic" and "it had insulted the people of Bengal".
"Tomorrow, [Prime Minister Narendra] Modi has two meetings in Bengal. When he finishes, the campaigning also ends... Instead of punishing Amit Shah, the Election Commission has given a gift to the BJP," she said.
Both parties are locked into a fierce election battle to win most of West Bengal's 42 seats. Ms Banerjee has ambitions of becoming the prime minister in case a nationwide coalition of regional parties wins enough seats.
The state has also become crucial for the BJP as it's trying to expand its reach in the eastern state. It won only two seats here in the 2014 election.
The BJP performed well in northern states like Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan in 2014, but this time it's expected to suffer loses against a coalition of regional parties and the main opposition Congress.
So the party is trying to make up for the losses in West Bengal.
On Wednesday, the TMC and the BJP accused each other of poll violence
What happened?
The war of words between West Bengal state chief minister Mamata Banerjee and the governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) intensified ahead of voting on Sunday.
The latest verbal duel came after violence was reported during BJP chief Amit Shah's roadshow in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) on Tuesday.
Clashes broke out between BJP supporters and protesters who were holding "Amit Shah go back" posters.
Some people suffered minor injuries and a few vehicles were set on fire.
The BJP said the protest was "orchestrated" and called it an "attempt to strangulate democracy".
Why does this matter?
The eastern state has become politically crucial for the BJP as it has intensified campaigning in the past few days.
And that has sparked a feverish electoral battle between the BJP and Ms Banerjee's Trinamool Congress (TMC).
"What does Amit Shah think of himself? Is he above everything? Is he god that no one can protest against him?" Ms Banerjee said.
In reply, Mr Shah accused the TMC of not following democratic norms during elections.
"Have faith in the people of Bengal that they'd face the TMC goons," he said.
On Tuesday, the saga of the morphed Mamata meme continued...
What happened?
India's top court stepped in to release an activist belonging to India's governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) who was sent to prison for sharing a doctored image of West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.
Priyanka Sharma was sentenced to two weeks in prison on 10 May after she shared a picture of Bollywood star Priyanka Chopra and her husband Nick Jonas at the Met Gala - but with Ms Banerjee's head superimposed on to Chopra's body.
Earlier the court had said Ms Sharma could be released only if she apologised to Ms Banerjee, but later waived this condition.
Why does this matter?
The battle for West Bengal in this general election has been absolutely bruising.
The BJP, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself, has been campaigning hard for votes in the state. This has brought them toe-to-toe with the state's feisty chief minister. The fact that voting for West Bengal's 42 seats has been split across all nine phases of voting has meant that the battle has been long and drawn-out.
And with just one phase to go before voting finally ends, the gloves were well and truly off. The two parties had traded insults on the campaign stage, their workers had attacked each other, and the violence on the ground intensified. And the battle spread to cyberspace as well.
The country's finance minister Arun Jaitley jumped at news of Ms Sharma's release to call Ms Banerjee a dictator.
Analysts say that this political row is so bitter because the BJP has clearly identified West Bengal as one of the states where they may be able to make gains this election. This becomes more important for the party in the context of their fight in the politically crucial state of Uttar Pradesh, which sends the most number of MPs (80) to parliament.
They are up against a powerful coalition of regional parties there, and many expect them to lose seats as a result.
And PM Modi said Rahul Gandhi should be ashamed of 1984 riots
What happened?
Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that main opposition Congress party chief Rahul Gandhi should be "ashamed of himself" over his colleague's remark on the 1984 anti-Sikh riots.
Mr Modi was replying to a controversial statement made by Sam Pitroda, who is a strategist of the Congress party.
In his reply to a question about the Congress' role in the riots, Mr Pitroda had said "so what?".
"I don't think so, this is also another lie, and what about 1984? You speak about what you [Mr Modi] have done in five years. It [the riots] happened in 1984, so what?" he said.
Mr Gandhi said he was "ashamed" of Mr Pitroda's statement, and asked him to apologise.
Mr Pitroda later said his statement was "twisted" and he did not mean to hurt sentiments.
But Mr Modi said the Congress chief "must apologise".
"I was watching that naamdar [the dynast] told his guru that he should be ashamed of what he said. I want to ask naamdar, you pretended to scold your mentor for what? Because he exposed what was always in the Congress's heart, and in the discussions of the naamdar family? Because he made public a family secret? Naamdar, it is you who should be ashamed," Mr Modi said.
Why does this matter?
The controversy matters because it came days ahead of voting for the 13 seats in the northern state of Punjab.
And both parties appeared to be trying to come across as pro-Sikh ahead of the vote on 19 May.
The BJP, which formed a coalition with regional Shiromani Akali Dal, is locked in a bitter electoral battle with the ruling Congress in the state.
Sikhs are a majority in the state and the 1984 riots are still an emotional issue for many of them.
More than 3,000 Sikhs were killed in the violence after the assassination of former prime minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards.
They were angry at her decision to send the army into the Golden Temple - Sikhism's holiest shrine - to flush out militants earlier in the year.
The killing of Mrs Gandhi, who belonged to the Congress, saw mobs attack and murder members of the Sikh community across the country.
On Sunday, Delhi voted but not enthusiastically
What happened?
Sunday saw India's capital Delhi vote along with several other states in the polls - the penultimate phase of the country's mammoth general election.
Voters turned out to vote, but in fewer numbers than they did in 2014. The election commission said that around 60% of the capital's registered voters had actually cast ballots, which was about a five percent drop from 2014.
Delhi's Chief Electoral Officer, Ranbir Singh, expressed disappointment, saying that the turnout did not match expectations.
Why does this matter?
The election commission was right to be disappointed - it had run a series of campaigns in the city, encouraging more people to vote.
But it was not as though polling in Delhi was an entirely smooth process. Some voters complained that their names were missing from electoral lists even though they had all the necessary documents. There were also reports that around 1,200 Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) had malfunctioned across the city, delaying the polling process.
The fact that Delhi became a three-cornered contest after the main opposition Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which controls the Delhi state assembly, failed to stitch up an alliance may also have put voters off. Many analysts believe that this failure will only split voters who were against prime minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and effectively hand them victory.
So they may have decided to just stay home, and not bother queuing up in the blistering heat - it touched 40C on Sunday.
India votes 2019
Coverage from previous weeks:
How do you vote in the election?
Here's a video explaining everything that happens inside a polling station - and what happens to your vote after that:
Ask a question
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A jobs fair is being held on Teesside in a bid to help steel workers and contractors hit by the closure of the SSI plant find new employment. | The Thai-based owners have gone into liquidation, with the loss of 2,200 jobs at the Redcar site.
There have also been knock-on job losses at contractors and suppliers.
More than 30 employers are showcasing opportunities, with vacancies ranging from heavy industry to administration and logistics.
Sue Soroczan, from Durham and Tees Valley Jobcentre Plus, said: "We've had a fantastic response from companies in the area and beyond.
"They recognise that the SSI workforce have excellent skills that would be transferable to a range of jobs currently available."
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Three years ago, Nick Robinson was diagnosed with cancer. The operation that successfully removed the tumour in his lung damaged his vocal cords. On Tuesday, he will present a debate about the future of the NHS at it approaches its 70th anniversary. | Nick RobinsonPresenter, Today programme
We can all delight in the fact NHS care is generally safer than in other systems - although the events at Gosport hospital are a reminder of the need not to be complacent - that it generally treats people with care and courtesy, is relatively cheap to run and gives the same level of care to rich and poor alike.
What, though, about those "healthcare outcomes" that put us "near the bottom" of the league table?
What, for example, about the illness I had - cancer?
Cancer survival rates here are significantly lower than in other countries. This is true not just of lung cancer but of other big cancer killers - in the bowel, in the colon, the pancreas and the prostate.
Indeed, in nine out of 10 cancers, the survival rates here are well below the European average.
In bowel cancer, we are 17th in the league table.
Put simply, put starkly, what that means is that tens of thousands of people with cancer survive for fewer years than they would if they lived in say Germany, France or the Netherlands.
BBC's Nick Robinson to have tumour removed
What will the NHS look like at 100?
The history of the NHS in charts
There have been great efforts to improve NHS cancer care. And some improvements are visible.
The detection and treatment of breast cancer has become significantly better in recent years - but there is a long way to go.
What's true of cancer is also true of the other big causes of death - heart attacks and strokes.
When it comes to tackling the most serious illnesses, the NHS is very far from being the best in the world.
"Aha," you might say, "surely the problem is obvious - money. We simply don't spend enough."
It is certainly true that the NHS has been through the longest, tightest financial squeeze in its history.
We spend less as a share of our national income on healthcare than they do in Germany or France.
We employ fewer people to care for us than they do in many other countries.
That is, no doubt, why the prime minister felt unable to resist the calls for a big boost to spending over the next five years.
Yet it is also true that we spend more than, say, the Irish or the Spanish and that our poor "healthcare outcomes" existed and were known about long before the age of austerity.
Yet in the decades I've been covering debates about the NHS, I have reported on endless rows about waiting times and waiting lists; on "reforms" and reorganisation; on allegedly secret plans to privatise the NHS but almost never on why it fails to keep people alive as well as other systems do.
I was lucky
There are, of course, no easy answers to that question.
Resources and organisation are surely a factor. Lifestyle, diet and public attitudes to health must all count too.
When it comes to cancer, it is even possible that one of the jewels in the NHS crown - the GP system - may slow down the process of getting people to see the specialists they need to see to get the tests and the treatment they need.
I was very lucky. My cancer could have been diagnosed much later.
International surveys suggest people in the UK are more likely to say their doctor knows about them and their health - but they also indicate the time we get to spend with our doctor is much shorter than elsewhere.
I worry that as more and more GPs retire early and as the pressure on the system increases, that standard of care is bound to fall.
On average, people now see their GP six times a year, which is twice as often 10 years ago.
It is just one of the new pressures on the health service we will be examining in NHS at 70 - Live.
We will look at the impact of an ageing population. In the past five years, the number of people aged over 85 has risen by almost a third.
Their care costs on average five times more than that of someone under 30.
We'll explore the increase in obesity. A staggering 63% of us are now officially classified as obese or overweight - including half of all NHS staff.
Then there is the increased demand for mental health care - one in four adults now experiences a mental heath problem in their lifetime.
I have much to be thankful for. The tumour in my lung was removed successfully.
The damage to my vocal cords - which was a side-effect of the operation - almost robbed me of my voice. But another op and many many hours of therapy restored it so I could fulfil my career ambitions and become a presenter on the Today programme on BBC Radio 4.
Incidentally, my experience raises one more question we all too rarely discuss - should there be limits to what the NHS provides?
When it came to getting my voice back, I had no choice but to pay for that therapy since there was no way the health service could - or, probably, should - have paid for the daily therapy sessions needed to get me back to work in weeks and not months.
There will always be limits on what the system can afford.
I have known for a very long time how superb the NHS can be but also that it has limitations.
Car crash survivor
As an 18-year-old, I was the sole survivor in a fatal car crash in France.
I spent a week heavily sedated in a respiratory intensive care unit in Lille, unable to breathe for myself.
When I pulled through and was sent home, I was treated and cared for by superb NHS doctors, nurses, physio- and occupational therapists, who got me back on my feet.
I was also informed that I would have died if I'd had the same accident in Britain, as the facilities in France were simply better than the ones we had.
So, I'll be joining with all those wishing the NHS a happy 70th birthday next week.
I'm aware there'll be parties and even religious services to celebrate the birth of one of Britain's best-loved institutions.
I know that no politician with any hope of high office will dare to declare anything other than love for it and will insist that it's the best of British.
However, the birthday gift the health service deserves as it turns three score years and 10 is not just warm words or even the promise of more cash.
It is an open, honest, clear-headed diagnosis of its strengths and, yes, its weaknesses too.
That and a national conversation about how those who care for us can help more people live longer healthier lives.
Nick Robinson will be presenting NHS at 70 - Live, on BBC Two, on Tuesday at 20:00 BST.
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The future state of cinema has been one of the most hotly-debated topics in sun-drenched Cannes this week, during what jury president Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu described as a "crucial" stage for the "collective film experience". | By Paul GlynnEntertainment reporter at the Cannes Film Festival
For the second year running, movies by streaming giant Netflix are notable by their absence, as talks remain ongoing between the studio and the festival about its commitment to theatrical releases.
French cultural laws dictate films considered for the esteemed Palme d'Or prize cannot be streamed within three years of competing and this unwavering stance caused Cannes to miss out on hosting the Oscar-winning Roma last year - as Netflix took the film to Venice for its premiere instead.
Prior to this year's event, festival director Thierry Frémaux declared: "We are not ready to welcome films that are not released in a theatre" and his passion for the preservation of the big screen experience - amidst a sea of readily available online content - was echoed on Tuesday by Inarritu who praised the "communal experience" of cinema.
However, the filmmaker remains upbeat that cinemas and streamers can work together to find a better solution.
"There are great films all around the world," he said, "the thing is the way they are accessed by everybody.
"France is an exception that they protect [cinemas] but I always ask how many of these films that we will see over the next 10 days will be exhibited around the world?
"I am a true believer that to watch a film is not to see a film, and to see [something] is not to experience something, and cinema was born to be experienced as a communal experience."
He continued: "I do not have anything against watching on a phone, on an iPad or a computer; I sometimes do it myself with my headphones and I can enjoy.
"But I know that to watch a film there, is not the same."
Inarritu - who won an Oscar for the sweeping survival tale The Revenant in 2016 - added: "I was saying the other day to a friend, if somebody 200 years from now should come alive and should see me listening to Beethoven in ridiculous speakers in my car, I would say 'yeah, it's great, what is wrong with that?'
"But it would be disastrous if there was not an opportunity to hear a whole 100 person orchestra playing in a concert hall.
"It's great that they [Netflix, Amazon et al] exist in TV but why not give people the chance to experience cinema?"
Blockbusters
One thing people in Cannes will not be able to experience this year, is the premiere of Martin Scorsese's new film, The Irishman - starring Robert De Niro and Al Pacino.
The Netflix-backed film would have been one of the biggest draws at this year's festival had an agreement been in place, although reports suggest it might not have been ready in time.
Scorsese has praised the streaming giant for affording him the "money" and freedom" to tell the story.
Other directors, though, including Steven Spielberg and Quentin Tarantino - who arrives next week with his new film, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood - appear more loyal to the Cannes cause and less keen to make "TV movies".
Imax CEO Richard Gelfond is doing nicely out of cinema and told the BBC streaming companies, which will soon include Apple+, Disney and Warner, might struggle to attract top filmmakers.
"I don't want to sound arrogant," he said, "but there really hasn't been an Imax-worthy film released by a streaming service until now.
"I think that they'll continue to [move into blockbusters] but they're a long way away."
"The biggest directors are reluctant to make a blockbuster for streaming," he added.
Gelfond has been toasting the recent success of the record-busting Avengers: Endgame movie. Imax screenings of the MCU finale broke through the $200m mark.
The chain's next move is to team up with Amazon studios to debut The Aeronauts, directed by Tom Harper and starring Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones, on Imax screens exclusively for a week in October.
The movie mogul suggests the success of the Avengers films in theatres globally "bodes well" for another concluding "event-driven" big-hitter, Star Wars, as audiences still want "to feel like they're inside the movie".
"To get people off the couch you've got to give them something different," he declared.
But he predicts the future for mid-budget movies will generally be away from the traditional major studios and "increasingly on to streaming platforms", as the industry adapts to the new technological era.
Netflix screened Roma in US movie theatres in order to it qualify for the Academy Awards and Gelfond argues that "once the [Cannes three year] window issue resolves itself" there is no reason why films made for online can't include "theatrical screenings" on release.
He's also hopeful that an Imax movie can one day win a Palme d'Or, claiming that Christopher Nolan's 2017 war epic, Dunkirk, was unlucky in that regard.
'Boutique on a world scale'
Away from the glamour of the Oscars and Cannes' official selection, filmmakers from around the world can be found in the basement of the Palais Des Festivals, showing off their wares to potential buyers and distributors.
Chantal Toporow from House of Film - "a boutique distributor on a world scale" as she puts it - believes the value of a theatre showing for a small film anywhere is worth much more than being included on a streaming service.
"We make movies with a twist and more cerebral curated content," she said.
"You're not monetising your film as best as you can only by streaming.
"You really want to get as many theatrical releases as you can, in Cambodia or wherever."
Whether her movies and those of many other filmmakers of the future will be able to find a home in cinemas, online and in competition at Cannes in the near future, remains to be seen.
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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The UK's ambassador to the European Union, Sir Ivan Rogers, has resigned. Here is his message to staff in full. We have highlighted key passages in bold, and added BBC political reporter Justin Parkinson's commentary in italics. | Dear All,
Happy New Year! I hope that you have all had/are still having, a great break, and that you will come back refreshed and ready for an exciting year ahead.
I am writing to you all on the first day back to tell you that I am today resigning as Permanent Representative.
As most of you will know, I started here in November 2013. My four-year tour is therefore due to end in October - although in practice if we had been doing the Presidency my time here would have been extended by a few months.
As we look ahead to the likely timetable for the next few years, and with the invocation of Article 50 coming up shortly, it is obvious that it will be best if the top team in situ at the time that Article 50 is invoked remains there till the end of the process and can also see through the negotiations for any new deal between the UK and the EU27.
It would obviously make no sense for my role to change hands later this year.
I have therefore decided to step down now, having done everything that I could in the last six months to contribute my experience, expertise and address book to get the new team at political and official level under way.
This will permit a new appointee to be in place by the time Article 50 is invoked.
Importantly, it will also enable that person to play a role in the appointment of Shan's replacement as DPR. (Shan Morgan was Deputy Permanent Representative)
I know from experience - both my own hugely positive experience of working in partnership with Shan, and from seeing past, less happy, examples - how imperative it is that the PR and DPR operate as a team, if UKREP is to function as well as I believe it has done over the last few years.
I want to put on record how grateful I am to Shan for the great working relationship we have had.
She will be hugely missed in UKREP, and by many others here in Brussels, but she will be a tremendous asset to the Welsh government.
From my soundings before Christmas, I am optimistic that there will be a very good field of candidates for the DPR role.
But it is right that these two roles now get considered and filled alongside each other, and for my successor to play the leading role in making the DPR appointment.
I shall therefore stand aside from the process at this point.
I know that this news will add, temporarily, to the uncertainty that I know, from our many discussions in the autumn, you are all feeling about the role of UKREP in the coming months and years of negotiations over "Brexit".
I am sorry about that, but I hope that it will help produce earlier and greater clarity on the role that UKREP should play.
My own view remains as it has always been. We do not yet know what the government will set as negotiating objectives for the UK's relationship with the EU after exit.
Justin Parkinson: This could be read as a hurry-up to the UK government to decide what it actually wants from Brexit talks, expected to start as early as April. This differs from criticism from some MPs that not enough is being divulged - Sir Ivan is implying a lack of direction at the heart of government, rather than vagueness in its public message. And he is suggesting that UK diplomats in Brussels need to be better informed.
There is much we will not know until later this year about the political shape of the EU itself, and who the political protagonists in any negotiation with the UK will be.
But in any negotiation which addresses the new relationship, the technical expertise, the detailed knowledge of positions on the other side of the table - and the reasons for them, and the divisions amongst them - and the negotiating experience and savvy that the people in this building bring, make it essential for all parts of UKREP to be centrally involved in the negotiations if the UK is to achieve the best possible outcomes.
Serious multilateral negotiating experience is in short supply in Whitehall, and that is not the case in the Commission or in the Council.
JP: Sir Ivan is suggesting there's a danger the UK could be outclassed in the Brexit talks - and lose out as a result. Diplomats must be better prepared, he is apparently arguing.
The government will only achieve the best for the country if it harnesses the best experience we have - a large proportion of which is concentrated in UKREP - and negotiates resolutely.
Senior ministers, who will decide on our positions, issue by issue, also need from you detailed, unvarnished - even where this is uncomfortable - and nuanced understanding of the views, interests and incentives of the other 27.
JP: Sir Ivan is saying that only civil servants, rather than campaigners and activists, can provide a true picture of the complexities ahead.
The structure of the UK's negotiating team and the allocation of roles and responsibilities to support that team, needs rapid resolution.
The working methods which enable the team in London and Brussels to function seamlessly need also to be strengthened.
The great strength of the UK system - at least as it has been perceived by all others in the EU - has always been its unique combination of policy depth, expertise and coherence, message co-ordination and discipline, and the ability to negotiate with skill and determination.
UKREP has always been key to all of that. We shall need it more than ever in the years ahead.
As I have argued consistently at every level since June, many opportunities for the UK in the future will derive from the mere fact of having left and being free to take a different path.
But others will depend entirely on the precise shape of deals we can negotiate in the years ahead.
Contrary to the beliefs of some, free trade does not just happen when it is not thwarted by authorities: increasing market access to other markets and consumer choice in our own, depends on the deals, multilateral, plurilateral and bilateral that we strike, and the terms that we agree.
JP: Sir Ivan does not name those he is effectively accusing of over-optimism and naivety, but this could be read as a criticism of pro-Brexit ministers - those said to favour a "hard Brexit", under which the UK could leave the European single market and customs union and be subject to the rules of the World Trade Organization. There is much hard work ahead, it suggests.
I shall advise my successor to continue to make these points.
Meanwhile, I would urge you all to stick with it, to keep on working at intensifying your links with opposite numbers in DEXEU [Department for Exiting the EU] and line ministries and to keep on contributing your expertise to the policy-making process as negotiating objectives get drawn up.
The famed UKREP combination of immense creativity with realism ground in negotiating experience, is needed more than ever right now.
On a personal level, leaving UKREP will be a tremendous wrench. I have had the great good fortune, and the immense privilege, in my civil service career, to have held some really interesting and challenging roles: to have served four successive UK prime ministers very closely; to have been EU, G20 and G8 Sherpa; to have chaired a G8 Presidency and to have taken part in some of the most fraught, and fascinating, EU negotiations of the last 25 years - in areas from tax, to the MFF to the renegotiation.
Of all of these posts, I have enjoyed being the Permanent Representative more than any other I have ever held.
That is, overwhelmingly, because of all of you and what you all make UKREP: a supremely professional place, with a fantastic co-operative culture, which brings together talented people whether locally employed or UK-based and uniquely brings together people from the home civil service with those from the Foreign Office.
UKREP sets itself demanding standards, but people also take the time to support each other which also helps make it an amazingly fun and stimulating place to work.
I am grateful for everything you have all done over the last few years to make this such a fantastic operation.
For my part, I hope that in my day-to-day dealings with you I have demonstrated the values which I have always espoused as a public servant.
I hope you will continue to challenge ill-founded arguments and muddled thinking and that you will never be afraid to speak the truth to those in power.
I hope that you will support each other in those difficult moments where you have to deliver messages that are disagreeable to those who need to hear them.
JP: The most-reported part of Sir Ivan's email, this implies that more planning is needed, and that ministers are unwilling to listen to the advice civil servants are offering. It gives a strong hint that his colleagues feel intimidated.
I hope that you will continue to be interested in the views of others, even where you disagree with them, and in understanding why others act and think in the way that they do.
I hope that you will always provide the best advice and counsel you can to the politicians that our people have elected, and be proud of the essential role we play in the service of a great democracy.
Ivan
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As Azerbaijan continues to clamp down on dissent in the run-up to hosting the Eurovision Song Contest in May, the BBC's Caucasus correspondent, Damian McGuinness, asks whether the competition risks being unfairly politicised. | It started with a letter and some photos. The photographs showed journalist Khadija Ismayilova having sex with her boyfriend - they were taken with a hidden camera installed in her bedroom without her knowledge.
And the letter ordered her to stop investigating alleged government corruption. Otherwise, it said, she would be publicly shamed.
Ms Ismayilova, one of Azerbaijan's most respected investigative journalists, refused to give in to the blackmail.
This was a brave decision in a conservative, mainly Muslim country where, although the state is secular, honour killings still take place.
'KGB methods'
The following week, on 14 March, a video showing her having sex, was posted online. It had been filmed with the same secret camera.
At the same time, two pro-government newspapers published articles accusing her of lax morals and alcoholism, and indicating where to find the video on the internet.
"I am sure this was done by someone in the government who has authority," says Ms Ismayilova.
She believes the blackmail was aimed at stopping her from reporting on allegations that President Ilham Aliyev's wife and daughters secretly own stakes in the country's banks and one of its biggest telecoms companies.
"They learnt these methods with the KGB. They try to misuse conservative feelings in society," she said.
"They thought this would make me stop my investigations. But I have stood up and talked about it openly. And society has supported me."
Some newspapers refused to join the smear campaign against Ms Ismayilova, and elders within Azerbaijan's Muslim community have publicly given her their support.
The government has denied involvement. A spokesman for President Aliyev, Ali Hasanov, released a statement saying the "right to privacy is a fundamental human right", and said that an investigation has been launched.
A source within the president's office told the BBC that the case was being taken seriously, and that the interior minister is also following the investigation.
But this is not the first time secret videos of a sexual nature have been used to blackmail government critics in Azerbaijan.
Last May, while Azeri opposition activists were holding their own Arab Spring-style protests, sexually explicit footage of two oppositional journalists was broadcast on TV.
Two separate videos showed the two activists engaging in sexual activity in the hotel rooms where they were staying for a conference.
The clips were broadcast on television, by a channel owned by a cousin of President Aliyev.
And in the run-up to the 2010 parliamentary elections, secretly-filmed footage of the editor-in-chief of an oppositional newspaper having sex with a young woman was shown on pro-government television.
There is no evidence of tourists or foreign journalists being targeted.
But Ms Ismayilova says visitors coming to Azerbaijan for Eurovision in May should be aware that cameras are sometimes planted in hotel rooms.
"Everyone should be worried. Big Brother can be watching you."
Scrutiny
Human rights activists worry that despite the attention attracted by Eurovision, the situation for journalists in Azerbaijan is getting worse, not better.
"It's alarming," says Rebecca Vincent from Article 19, a media freedom organization.
"We thought that the international scrutiny, with the preparations for Eurovision, would bring more freedom. But instead the authorities are cracking down even harder."
Rasul Jafarov, who has launched Sing For Democracy, a campaign that aims to use Eurovision to improve human rights, says the government has a stranglehold over television and radio media.
"Just as other spheres of the economy are in the hands of oligarchs or people connected to the government, the heads of all the TV channels are pro-government, and in some cases relatives of people in government. So they have concrete pressure mechanisms," he said.
According to Article 19, 11 journalists, bloggers and media workers are currently detained or imprisoned in Azerbaijan.
Last year, there were 11 documented attacks on journalists, and 16 cases of reporters being subjected to violence while at work.
And last November, a journalist who was critical of the government was murdered in Baku. This case remains unsolved.
When it comes to media freedom, the situation in Azerbaijan is "dire", according to Freedom House.
Transparency International ranks Azerbaijan 143rd out of 183 countries in itsCorruption Perceptions Index.
Criticism of the government by non-journalists can also provoke a heavy-handed response.
According to Amnesty International, four youth activists were beaten and 17 arrested at the beginning of March for taking part in a peaceful protest.
And last week, two musicians and a music promoter were arrested and allegedly beaten by police after they were accused of insulting the president's family during a concert.
Ms Vincent believes that the international spotlight brought by Eurovision means more government critics are now starting to speak out.
But, faced with unprecedented international attention, the authorities appear more concerned than ever with covering up allegations of corruption, and are reacting harshly in an attempt to safeguard Azerbaijan's image.
'Platform for change'
Tucked between Iran, Turkey and Russia in a little known part of the world, Azerbaijan has been largely ignored by the international media
Until, that is, the country won last year's Eurovision Song Contest, making it this year's host.
Human rights activists see it as their chance to use the international spotlight to bring alleged abuses of power to the world's attention.
For the press, the contrast between the glitz and glamour of pop and the shady reputation of Azerbaijan's human rights record is a story that is hard to resist.
After all, Azerbaijan, a member of the Council of Europe, portrays itself as a modern, Western-leaning democracy with a free and fair press. As a result, many argue the country should be held to account.
But Michelle Roverelli, a spokeswoman for the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), the confederation of broadcasters that organises Eurovision, says the contest is light-hearted entertainment, and should not be used as a political tool.
"Eurovision can be a platform for change," she explained. "It puts a spotlight on a country. So we understand that human rights groups use it to advance their interests. We accept that."
"But we have to leave politics out of the contest itself," she added."If I have to attack the Azeri government during Eurovision's opening press conference, you can imagine what would happen."
Championing individual causes in every host country would mean the end of Eurovision, she believes.
Instead, in its capacity as a network of public broadcasters, the EBU regularly talks to member states about media freedom and trains local journalists.
And in May, the EBU will host a conference in Geneva, bringing together the Azeri government and human rights activists, to improve the situation for journalists in Azerbaijan.
Fans of the song contest think it a little unfair that Eurovision is being criticised for coming to a country described as authoritarian.
After all, the event is bringing with it unprecedented attention to Azerbaijan's human rights issues.
Euro-pop, glitzy outfits and dodgy dance moves may not be able change the world. But they are certainly pushing Azerbaijan, warts and all, into the limelight.
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When Alec Butler was born in 1959 it was assumed Alec was female. But after being brought up as a girl, Alec - now an award-winning writer and film-maker - realised they were intersex, someone whose anatomical, hormonal or genetic sex is neither completely male nor female. | I was about 12 when it really hit. I started to grow a beard and I had a period. So it was really confusing for me. My parents were a little freaked out. They took me to some doctors, but no-one knew about being intersex in the small town where I grew up in Canada. One doctor said, "We're going to have to put her in a mental institution until she learns how to dress like a girl and put on makeup." This was at the age of 12, when even most genetic girls aren't being forced to do that. Luckily my parents were outraged and they said, "We're not going to do that. We're just going to love you, and you can choose how you want to be." That was a gift. Lots of intersex kids don't have that.
My whole family was very loving. I had lots of vitality, I was funny, and I could entertain people with my Elvis Presley impersonations. I was always interested in art and writing. As a kid I remember seeing a Van Gogh painting. I was blown away by it. My parents were working class, and the only books at home were encyclopaedias which I read back to back. My family was very accepting of me - it was just school and society that were hard.
As soon as I could get away with wearing trousers all the time, I did. That was really difficult back then, to be a girl and to want to wear trousers. And I felt pressure to take female hormones to make me more feminine, even though I wanted to be more masculine - I wanted to be a boy.
At school I was picked on. I was worried about being called crazy so I tried to fit in, tried not to get in too much trouble. But when you're in a body like mine, it is trouble. People get upset. I had problems because I liked a girl, and she actually liked me too. But it all went terribly wrong because I was intersex and not really a boy I guess. I was called lesbian, lezzie, dyke… and I was screamed at by the other kids, "You're sick! You're sick!" I was passed notes in class, stuff like, "Why don't you just kill yourself?"
At that time we were living on a military base in the east of Canada in Oromocto because my dad was in the army. The school was huge, and because I was bullied constantly, my dad got really worried about what might happen. So he took early retirement, lost a chunk of his pension, and we moved to the bush in Cape Breton, an island off Nova Scotia. But in many ways that was even more oppressive because it was so isolated and people were even more ignorant.
When I graduated from high school in 1978, I found it hard to get a job. I moved to Toronto to live my life as a queer person and to follow my dreams. Back then I was presenting as a butch lesbian. It was a way of getting a community, support and feeling accepted. I didn't know any other intersex people - I didn't even know the word back then.
Glossary
Find out more: Gendered Intelligence
See also: A guide to transgender terms
Life wasn't easy. I had people threaten me with death on the street. I had things thrown at me. Somebody tried to throw me under a street car. And at a Gay Pride parade, I was surrounded by gay men who threatened to pull down my trousers. It could be really scary.
Butch lesbians get a huge amount of hatred directed at them, even to this day. One of the reasons I pass more as male now is because psychologically, I couldn't deal with the violence and the expressions of hatred.
But I got my plays produced, and I made a name for myself in the community.
During the early 1990s, I took care of friends who were dying of Aids. It was a really busy time, a crazy time. I didn't want people to know I had a beard but during that period I just didn't have time to shave. So stubble appeared, and my friends said, "Wow, you have a beard! That's really cool, you should grow it out." So after my friends died, I did grow my beard in memory of them, and in honour of how they accepted me. But I got in trouble again - it didn't go down well in the lesbian bars. Women would say, "What are you doing at a lesbian bar?" And I was like, "Well, I'm a lesbian too, and some of us have beards."
It was probably not until the mid-1990s that I knew I was intersex. One day someone I'd known for years said, "Do you think you might be intersex?" And I was like, "What's that, intersex!?" So I ended up googling it and researching it very intensively, and I thought, "Yeah, that's what I am." And then I remembered things my mother told me about when she was pregnant with me. She was taking a drug called progestin, and I know from my research that it causes intersex in babies, so I think that's what happened to me.
Alec Butler was talking to Linda Pressly - listen to her report for The Documentary on BBC World Service from 03:00 GMT on Sunday 24 April 2016, or catch up afterwards on iPlayer.
As people become increasingly connected and more mobile, the BBC is exploring how identities are changing. As part of this, The Salon: Stories of women's identity from the hairdresser's chair, is speaking to people around the world.
For more stories go to the BBC's Identity season or join the discussion on Twitter using the hashtag #BBCIdentity.
In the late 1990s I changed my name to Alec. My partner and I both came out as transgender - from lesbian lovers, we became brothers! It was quite a shock to the community. I didn't really have to do anything except change my name because I was already pretty masculine. And I like my body the way it is - I had no desire to change it. I like having a beard. I like having breasts. I just like it. It works for me most of the time. It's hard to start a relationship though, because it is different. Sometimes it's tough for lovers to get their heads around, but I appreciate people who reach out and try to break down those walls.
It's really problematic for people to understand the concept of being intersex. And intersex people have had a hard time of it. If they've been surgically altered, they're told to hide it, and they're ashamed. Many people align with one gender or the other. Perhaps it's easier to live like that, to choose to be a man or a woman, and stick with it. But now there are alliances being built between non-binary queers like me, and other intersex people. And it's more hopeful for those born intersex - surgery isn't as important any more, and parents have realised it's their own anxiety they're trying to fix when they choose one or other gender for their children. The kids are usually fine with it. I was fine with being taken for a boy or a girl - it was fun sometimes to fool people.
In terms of pronouns, I use "they" and "he". I sometimes get called "she". I don't really mind that, but it does depend where it's coming from. If it's said in a rude manner, I don't like that. But I don't really mind - it's just a pronoun!
More from the Magazine
In the English language, the word "he" is used to refer to males and "she" to refer to females. But some people identify as neither gender, or both - which is why an increasing number of US universities are making it easier for people to choose to be referred to by other pronouns, writes Avinash Chak.
Beyond 'he' and 'she': The rise of non-binary pronouns
Now I'm studying Aboriginal studies at the University of Toronto. In Canada's native communities before colonisation, transgender people, masculine women and feminine men were seen as doubly blessed because they possessed the spirit of both male and female. They were two-spirit people. It's a controversial term, but they were hugely important - teachers, marriage counsellors, and they were given special roles in ceremonies.
I found out about my native heritage in a very painful way. When my mother was dying, I asked her why she left school at 12. She told me she couldn't take it any more, being called a dirty little Indian. I asked her if that was true. She didn't really answer because it was just something you couldn't talk about - you're taught to be ashamed of your native heritage. But the way she looked at me, I definitely got the message that "Yes, we have native ancestors." For me, identifying as two-spirit means I can feel good about being a man and a woman in one body. And my whole purpose in going back to school is to reclaim that two-spirit identity - it complements my non-binary, intersex identity. It puts the puzzle together for me as a person in this world: I'm not weird, I'm part of humanity. Other people like me exist and have always existed, despite efforts to wipe us out.
Now I'm taking testosterone - not because I need to pass as more male, but because of health reasons. For some reason I still get periods, and my doctor's saying, "You should be in menopause by now." But I'm not. And my periods are so physically demanding. I get a lot of pain and it interrupts my creative life. So I'm on testosterone to deal with that.
I think it's amazing that a growing number of young Canadians are identifying as non-binary. I wish it had happened 40 years ago when I was a kid because I would've had a much less traumatic life. This new movement has given me a lot of confidence. I actually look forward to going out most days whereas I didn't really go out much before. It was just too hard and too uncomfortable. I would get confronted by people - they'd come up and pinch my boob and say, "Oh, they're real," and I'm like "Yeah, they're real - you didn't have to do that." So maybe an acceptance of non-binary people will help - you can't assume you can touch somebody or say just anything. You can't even assume someone's male or female, and that's good.
The message I want to put out to my community - intersex, non-binary and native - is, be proud to be mixed gender and mixed race. That's what I've learned to be - proud.
Pieces of me
Five non-binary people, including Alec, pick the objects that reflect who they are.
Read more from Alec
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Three people have been injured after a lorry and a train collided at a level crossing in the second similar crash in under a year.
| It was at Whitland, Carmarthenshire, at what is known as the Llanboidy crossing just before 16:00 BST on Friday.
Mid and West Wales Fire and Rescue Service sent two engines to the scene.
A similar incident happened at the same level crossing in December 2011 when a passenger train was involved in a crash with a lorry and trailer carrying hay.
The fire service said via Twitter passengers were being transferred onto buses to Carmarthen station.
It said three casualties with minor injuries were treated by paramedics at the scene.
The B4328 road was closed while investigations were carried out.
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So more or less on the anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Bros, which triggered the mother of all banking crises, the Treasury has begun the privatisation of one of the enormous banks rescued by taxpayers in the autumn of 2008. | Robert PestonEconomics editor
Tonight the government is trying to sell 6% of Lloyds for around £3.3bn - which represents a bit under a sixth of our 39% stake in the bank.
Based on tonight's market price of Lloyds, of just over 77p, the Treasury should get back more or less the cash invested by taxpayers in Lloyds - which was 73.6p per share.
During the eurozone banking crisis of 2011-12, getting our money back looked an impossibility.
That said, we won't make a fat profit. And the National Audit Office will point out that when the cost of money is taken into account, taxpayers will make a loss.
There is one other important financial characteristic of this deal for the chancellor: it will show a "book" profit to the government of around £600m and will reduce the national debt by that amount.
The notional profit stems from what some would see as the eccentricities of how the government accounts are written, namely that the shares were included in the government books not at their cash price, but at the (lower) market price on the day of the purchase of shares being a legal reality.
However, for Lloyds, the big point is that it moves nearer to being back in the private sector. And even in this initial sale, many will say taxpayers will get their money back (at least in cash terms).
PS: These shares are all being offered to investment institutions. The next sale of Lloyds stock will also include an element aimed at retail investors.
UPDATE 20:35
My hunch is that the Treasury is likely to receive around 75p per share for the 6% of Lloyds it is selling - a small discount to the closing market price of 77.3p, and a slight premium to the cash price paid by taxpayers for the stake in 2008 and 2009.
Around 80% to 90% of the shares are likely to end up in the hands of British and American investment institutions, in a sale being conducted for the government by JP Morgan, UBS and Bank of America.
The potential buyers of the shares are being given a promise by the Treasury that it won't sell any more Lloyds shares for at least 90 days. Which means that part two of this privatisation cannot happen till the end of the year, at the very earliest.
As for when individuals can be expected to be offered shares in a retail offering comparable to Margaret Thatcher's "Tell Sid" privatisations, that cannot happen till after Lloyds publishes its annual report for 2013, to allow for the writing of a proper prospectus.
The annual report won't be available till February. Which implies that a share sale to millions of people can't and won't happen till some months into the new year, at the earliest.
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A photograph taken on the Western Isles has won the 2019 Scottish Nature Photographer of the Year Awards. | Norfolk-based landscape photographer Ruth Grindrod took her image, Three Rocks, at the Butt of Lewis.
The image also won the contest's seascapes category.
Ms Grindrod said: "My journey to Scotland is always a long one, but I will never fail to be excited by some of the best landscapes and seascapes in the world."
Related Internet Links
Scottish Nature Photography Awards
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Four stamps to celebrate the Duke of Cambridge's 30th birthday are being issued by Jersey Post on Thursday. | Sally Diamond Ferbrache from Jersey Post said the images showed Prince William's military connections.
She said: "With so much emphasis on The Queen's Diamond Jubilee this year, we felt that it was important to celebrate this milestone birthday."
Pictures on the stamps show the prince wearing British Army, Royal Air Force, Royal Navy, and Irish Guards uniforms.
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The International Committee of the Red Cross says that the Tamil Tiger guerrillas in Sri Lanka have handed over to the government
the bodies of nineteen soldiers killed in some of the latest fighting in the north of the island. | At the same time the Red Cross passed on to the Tigers the bodies of two rebels killed by the army. Both sides say that they've
inflicted dozens of casualties on the other over the past few days of fierce clashes in Sri Lanka.
The Tigers have been coming under sustained pressure recently, with government forces capturing the town of Mallavi on Tuesday.
Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara said that only some of the bodies have been identified and others are in a decomposed state.
“The LTTE has handed over bodies only once they are decomposed “said Brigadier Nanayakkara.
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Jay-Z has joined the production team for a new 'afrobeat musical' set to open on Broadway. | He joins actress Jada Pinkett Smith on working on Fela!, a production based on the life of Nigerian multi-instrumentalist Fela Kuti.
The show is expected to open on 23 November at New York's Eugene O'Neill Theatre.
Credited as one of afrobeat's founders, the musician and political activist, Fela Kuti died in 1997.
Music for the show has been aranged by the Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra who have previously contributed to albums by Foals and TV On The Radio.
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Members of United Against Fascism (UAF) are to hold a vigil in Blackpool, as the English Defence League (EDL) holds a rally in the resort.
| The events are planned for Saturday 28 May, during the bank holiday weekend.
The EDL is due to march along the promenade to the headland close to the South Pier where it will hold a demonstration from 1245 to 1400 BST.
The UAF plans to hold a vigil at the headland at 1200 BST, the group confirmed.
Lancashire Police said while it could not ban a peaceful protest, it was considering imposing restrictions or conditions.
It said it hoped residents and businesses in the resort would not be disrupted by the plans but warned some roads may be closed temporarily.
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The second of nine new maritime patrol aircraft for the RAF has arrived at a military base in Scotland after being flown from the United States. | The £3bn fleet of P-8A Poseidons is to be stationed at RAF Lossiemouth on the Moray coast.
The first of the completed planes will operate from nearby Kinloss Barracks, a former RAF station, while new facilities are built at Lossiemouth.
It is almost 10 years since the RAF's last patrol aircraft were scrapped.
The last of those jet aircraft, called Nimrods, flew out of RAF Kinloss in 2010. New Nimrods were dismantled for scrap as part of defence cuts, but not replaced by another type of plane.
The first of the new Poseidons was flown to Kinloss in February.
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The coalition government is pushing ahead with its Academies Bill, under which all schools in England will be able to opt out of local authority control. It wants to enable schools rated "outstanding" to convert to academy status by September. Two head teachers of such schools explain their opposing views.
| In favour - Lorraine Heath, Uffculme School, Devon
For us it's as much about preserving what we've already got, as it is about thinking what we can develop and improve in the future.
We know there are some cuts coming, we don't know how far they're going to go and when they're going to come, but opting out of local authority control gives us the opportunity to make some decisions ourselves about what we can preserve, what we can improve and where, perhaps, we can make savings.
I don't think it is true that academies take resources away from other schools.
The local authority receives money from central government for the education of all the children within the local authority. They make a decision as to how much they're going to top-slice that money. In Devon it's 8%, in some areas it's as little as 2 or 3%.
And they make decisions over how that money's going to be spent. Now that's our money, and all we're doing is asking for our share of that money so that we can make those decisions ourselves and not be dictated to by the local authority.
I think it will help academically. If we are are going to get additional resources and we decide to spend them on teachers in classrooms, that's going to help us to improve and preserve the really high standards that we've already got - rather than the money being spent on peripherals.
For me, the most important thing is having my teachers in the classroom teaching children, and to not be facing a redundancy situation, which a lot of schools are doing at the moment.
The passage of the Bill [to enable schools to convert by September] is quick. I have to say there's a lot to do.
We're a foundation school, which means we're already in a sense half way there - we already employ all our own staff, we already own our own land, so it's not as rushed for us as it might be for a community school.
But actually, knowing where you're going to be on 1 September is really important. I think there's a rationale for rushing it through, because schools need to know and need to make their plans for September.
If we were to become an academy, it would in essence take money and resources from all the other Rotherham schools - and schools across the nation, and simply give it to us.
I am head of an outstanding, high-performing school. I'm already doing very nicely, thank you very much, so why give me extra money at the expense of other schools that need it?
What we've got in this country is an attempt to get, at the very least, within two or three miles of every child, a state secondary school that is good or outstanding. That's every child - not just my child or your child, but every child.
But if this present government is going to follow a "best and the rest" type policy, then we're going to have a situation where we have the haves and have-nots, which is what we used to have. They're busy dismantling all the good work that's been taking place in education over recent years.
In education, we collaborate. We compete with ourselves. I'm interested in the fortunes of all children, not just the ones I happen to teach.
They have been disingenuous in the naming of these new schools. The old academies were about giving failing schools a leg up. The data suggests it hasn't been particularly successful, but was a laudable attempt, and the intent was right and proper.
These are not academies in that sense, these are grant-maintained schools, they were around in the 1980s, the last time the Tories had power. They failed and these new schools will fail also. The two types of academies are very, very different.
I have canvassed all the staff and all the governors in my school in a secret ballot. We found that 83% of staff were against, 2% were for and 15% didn't know. The governors were unanimously against.
[Prime Minister] David Cameron says he wants to hear what parents have to say, and yet [on this issue] parents don't get a vote.
One minute we can ask the parents - but when we think that they may disagree with us, all of a sudden we don't ask. The government can't have it both ways.
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Papua New Guinea occupies the eastern part of the world's second largest island and is prey to volcanic activity, earthquakes and tidal waves. Linguistically, it is the world's most diverse country, with more than 700 native tongues. | Some 80% of Papua New Guinea's people live in rural areas with few or no facilities of modern life.
Many tribes in the isolated mountainous interior have little contact with one another, let alone with the outside world, and live within a non-monetarised economy dependent on subsistence agriculture.
A very small proportion of the land can sustain cash crops, including coffee and cocoa. Abundant rainforests provide the raw material for a logging industry, which is dominated by Malaysian-owned companies.
Conservation groups have criticised the social and environmental impact of the activity.
Mineral deposits - including gold, copper and nickel - are extensive, but the difficult terrain and poor infrastructure make exploitation slow. There are significant reserves of oil and natural gas and the country has pinned its hopes on becoming a significant energy exporter.
The separatist struggle in the neighbouring Indonesian province of Papua, formerly known as Irian Jaya, prompted the flight of thousands of Papuans into Papua New Guinea from the mid-1980s onwards. Many of them remain in border-area jungle camps.
Although there is strong public concern in Papua New Guinea over the treatment of indigenous people in the western part of the island, the Papua New Guinean government is keen not to let the issue undermine relations with Indonesia, and has said it will not tolerate the use of its territory for separatist attacks on the Indonesian army.
Papua New Guinea had to deal with separatist forces of its own on the island of Bougainville in the 1990s. Up to 20,000 people were killed in the nine-year conflict which ended in 1997.
A peace deal signed in 2001 provided the framework for the election in 2005 of an autonomous government for Bougainville.
Papua New Guinea has strong ties with its southern neighbour, Australia, which administered the territory until independence in 1975. Canberra's substantial aid programme aims to relieve poverty and to boost development.
Australia has also despatched police officers and civil servants to support their local equivalents.
Concerns have been raised over high levels of crime and violence in the country, especially gender-based violence. The incidence of HIV/Aids is extremely high, and diseases such as cholera and malaria are endemic.
There has also been criticism of Papua New Guinea's human rights record. Refugees in the country have been the targets of xenophobic attacks, and police brutality is commonplace.
Though the death penalty has not been used since 1954, in May 2013 legislation extending it to cover a wider range of crimes was passed.
Corruption is rife, with Transparency International rating the country one of the most corrupt in the world in 2012.
Analysts see political corruption as being a product of the patronage system of governance, and the fact that many politicians are also businessmen has exacerbated the problem.
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A man arrested on suspicion of murder following the death of a 60-year-old woman in Devon has been released without charge. | The woman's body was discovered by police at a house in Wonnacotts Road, Okehampton, on Saturday.
Devon and Cornwall Police said the death is no longer being treated as suspicious.
The criminal investigation is over and inquires are being handed over to the coroners court, the force added.
Related Internet Links
Devon and Cornwall Police
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In 1980 a baby girl was given up for adoption for being the wrong colour - she was mixed-race, her parents were white, and this was apartheid South Africa. But being brought up by a white couple in the UK left her searching for her place in the world. She only found it when she returned to the country of her birth. | By Miriam AnnenbergBBC Stories
As the plane touched down in Johannesburg, Sara-Jayne King caught her breath. More than 25 years had passed since she had last seen South Africa.
She had no conscious memories of it. She had left Johannesburg as a seven-week-old infant, to be deposited by her biological mother in England. The years in between had not been easy. Sara-Jayne had never come to terms with being abandoned by her birth mother, and had struggled as a biracial child in middle-class Surrey.
She got off the plane, walking through the airport and towards the car that would take her to the rehab centre. Here, Sara-Jayne hoped to rid herself of her self-harming behaviour and sort out the pieces of her life. As the car swept her along, a familiarity washed over her. "I've been here before," she thought. "I've been here before, and I belong."
Growing up in the home counties, Sara-Jayne knew she looked different from her parents, but never thought of "black" as her identity until others in the town pointed it out. Her classmates often touched her hair, telling her it felt like wire wool. For a long time, Sara-Jayne was the only black girl she knew. Others told her she was different, so she felt different. "We sort of absorb other people's views of us," she says.
Bit by bit, Sara-Jayne came to feel there was something wrong with being black.
Grappling with her race and adoption became a constant, uncomfortable reminder that she lacked a clear picture of who she was. What it meant to be black, or South African or adopted - it was all muddled in Sara-Jayne's mind. She felt alienated and alone.
The details of her adoption were vague. She was told her adoptive mother had been unable to have a baby, and that she herself had come from South Africa. That was all.
She had one older brother who was also adopted and black. Her only other reference to black people was 1980s British television, which she said was neither realistic nor flattering to people of colour. Other than that, she had no racial mirrors.
"I woke up every morning and looked out across fields and saw chickens and lambs," she says. "I really was living a very sort of white, middle-class existence."
In her village, Crowhurst, Africans were viewed as destitute. Her school held food collections for starving children in Ethiopia. Sara-Jayne remembers seeing children covered in flies in dusty landscapes and assumed those images defined her, as well. "It was a place to be pitied and it was a place to sort of turn one's nose up at," she says. "It was a place to be grateful that I had been rescued from."
While Sara-Jayne believed being black was bad, she soon learned blackness and brownness came in varying degrees. While her blackness was undesirable, others' could be attractive.
When she was eight years old, three girls from Mauritius moved to town. They were beautiful, with soft wavy hair and glowing skin. They were the right type of brown people. Meanwhile, Sara-Jayne's hair proved unruly. Every Sunday morning her father struggled to brush it as Sara-Jayne squirmed in pain. It was something she felt guilty about until she had it relaxed for the first time as a teenager.
Despite their best intentions, her family exacerbated her feeling of isolation. Sara-Jayne remembers once watching the summer Olympics with her grandmother. As the competition began, she turned to Sara-Jayne, informing her that she would cheer for Britain and her granddaughter could root "for Africa".
At the age of 14, Sara-Jayne made an unexpected discovery. While snooping around her mother's room, she uncovered a letter from her biological mother, written nearly a year after her birth. The letter was addressed to her. She opened it and began reading. The story of her adoption, in shocking detail, unfolded before her.
Find out more
Listen to Sara-Jayne King on Outlook on the BBC World Service
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She learned that her biological mother, a white British woman in a relationship with a white man, had had an affair with a black man. When she became pregnant, she had been unsure which man was the father. The child appeared white at birth, and her mother named the baby Karoline. But a few weeks later her mother realised the child was not, in fact, white. Karoline was the black man's child, and her existence became not a source of parental joy, but a problem to be dealt with.
At the time of Karoline's birth, the South African Immorality Act forbade interracial sexual relationships, and Karoline was proof of an illegal affair. So her biological mother and her husband, along with their doctor, devised a plan. They claimed Karoline suffered from a rare kidney disease and required advanced medical treatment in London. But once there they gave her up for adoption. Returning to South Africa empty-handed, the couple told everyone at home that Karoline had died.
Sara-Jayne struggled with the knowledge that her mother had given her up, and had even pretended she was dead. "The colour of my skin was so abhorrent, and what my biological parents had done was so disgusting, that I would have to be taken from my homeland and raised elsewhere," she says. "I felt this feeling of how dreadful must one be as a person that the one person on Earth who is supposed to love you, and care for you, and nurture you no matter what, was able to do what my biological mother had done, which was to give away her child."
This bitter feeling of rejection had begun to manifest itself even before Sara-Jayne read the letter. She had deliberately overdosed on Paracetamol at the age of 13. Later, she began cutting herself.
A few years after reading the letter, in her first year studying law at the University of Greenwich, she contacted her biological mother through the adoption agency. She responded, saying she would answer Sara-Jayne's questions, but then had no desire for continued communication. She never expressed remorse or offered an apology.
At around this time, Sara-Jayne developed an eating disorder and started self-medicating with alcohol and codeine. Despite this, she completed her degree and earned a master's degree in journalism from the University of Canterbury. She landed a string of good jobs, moving from England to Dubai and began building a successful radio career.
But her past hung over her like a cloud she could not escape. Her adoptive father was no longer in her life, her brother had killed himself and her biological mother had rejected her a second time. Continuing to struggle with eating disorders, alcohol and self-harm she was fired from her job in Dubai. Eventually, she reached a breaking point. It was 2007 and time for Sara-Jayne to get help, and she discovered rehab was cheaper in South Africa. Leaving Johannesburg had set Sara-Jayne on her path towards emotional turmoil and substance abuse. She hoped returning would heal those wounds.
On the final descent into Johannesburg, Sara-Jayne looked out over the country that could have been her home. "We're still in the air and I thought, 'Something momentous is happening,'" she says. "The plane wheels touched down and I thought, 'I'm home.'"
As the car drove her to the rehab centre, she felt she had been on the same roads before - and as it turns out, she had. The hospital where her mother gave birth is only three streets away. Sara-Jayne thinks a sense of the place must have been engraved on her mind, at only a few weeks old. She felt instinctively that she belonged.
Sara-Jayne spent about a year in treatment in South Africa, moving between Johannesburg and Cape Town. While there, she met her half-brother - her biological mother's other child - and for a while they were quite close. She returned to the UK, but, after several years of shuttling back and forth between London and Cape Town, she decided to move to South Africa. "It felt like home," she says.
As she stood in her room packing her bags the night before her move in 2013, her friend messaged her with the news that Nelson Mandela had died. "The South Africa that I came back to, to call my permanent home, was a South Africa in mourning, but also in celebration," she says. "It was South Africa at its best - and we don't see that very often."
When Sara-Jayne touched down in South Africa, she knew this time it was for good. She was ready to realise her identity as a black South African woman.
One step she needed to take was to formally change her name. "Karoline" had been a back-up name, an alternate version of Sara-Jayne had she been born white, but "Karoline King" was the name on her South African birth certificate. To fully become herself, Sara-Jayne needed to put Karoline to bed.
Even in the UK, her name had technically been Sarah Jane; her adoptive parents had named her Sarah, with Jane as her middle name. In order to stand out from the other Sarahs at school, she dropped the H, added a Y to Jane and hyphenated them.
This had been a small way for her to assert her own identity growing up, rather than the one forced upon her. Making it official was the next step. "I'll never forget the day that I finally went in and I collected my ID book," she says. "My name was Sara-Jayne King. And I thought, that's it. That fits. That's me."
Two years ago, Sara-Jayne released a book chronicling the circumstances of her adoption and the trajectory of her life afterwards. She had hired a private investigator to help her find her biological father, but without success. Then, while promoting her book on the radio, she mentioned his name. That's when Twitter jumped into action. Within 36 hours of the radio show airing, she had her father's phone number. She dialled it, and, for the first time, heard his voice on the phone. They talked for 30 minutes.
The pair spoke every day for a week before Sara-Jayne got on a plane to Johannesburg to meet her father, in person. They arranged to meet at a coffee shop in a shopping mall.
It was, she says, the best day of her life. "I will never forget him just walking around the corner, and we both just burst into tears, and he hugged me and he said, 'My daughter, my daughter,'" she says. "It suddenly dawned on me, I am someone's daughter. I am someone's daughter, and I belong."
Two years later. Sara-Jayne is considering one more name change - adding her father's last name to her own and becoming Makwala King. Though she lives in Cape Town, working for Cape Talk radio, she travels occasionally to Johannesburg to see her father and her three half-siblings. She still has a close relationship with her adoptive mother in the UK, but rejoices at having found her South African family.
And she now feels confident in her identity as a black South African. She never really felt British. When others attempt to put her in a box, it no longer throws her off balance like it used to. "I think some people still find that a difficult concept that actually, you don't get to decide who I am and how I identify," she says. "I couldn't give two hoots how other people think I should identify."
All pictures courtesy of Sara-Jayne King, who is the author of Killing Karoline
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Airlines have long been risky investments, and they're in for a turbulent journey as coronavirus spreads. Flybe was particularly weak, but others are vulnerable. Loganair's move to pick up 16 routes may look hasty, but it's been carefully planned, to avoid the Renfrewshire-based airline becoming another casualty. The industry's own forecast for worldwide loss of revenue this year look eye-watering - potentially as severe as the financial crash of 2008, which brought down several airlines. | Douglas FraserBusiness/economy editor, Scotland
Running an airline has always been more about the glamour than profit. There are good years, but they come with a lot of risk, and with bad years.
There are high fixed costs, but passenger demand is fickle. So is the oil price, and currency hedging is a big challenge.
And growing one's market share is for those with deep pockets, such as those stitched into Arab attire. Etihad, based in Abu Dhabi, on Thursday reported an $870m (£660m) loss for 2019, adding to $4.67bn (£3.5bn) of losses over the previous three years. It plans to break even in 2023.
Thirteen years ago, on the anniversary of the Wright brothers' pioneering flight, the US investment sage Warren Buffett told his disciples: "If a farsighted capitalist had been present at Kitty Hawk, he would have done his successors a huge favour by shooting Orville down".
So Flybe has joined a long list of those that flew too high, or ran out of financial fuel. It had lots going wrong, and for some time. Too many aircraft, of too many types, on poor leasing terms, earned it losses for most of the past 10 years. It tried lots of changes, including a split from its Loganair partner on Scottish island flights.
That now looks fortuitous, both because it meant island routes avoided the trauma of the Flybe collapse, and it was the starting point for Loganair to expand.
With Flybe's collapse, the political response has sounded as if this airline was providing a lifeline service to Britain's smaller city airports. The service was to passengers, yes, and also to the airport operators, because these routes kept them open.
Southampton is one example. Some 95% of its flights were Flybe. That matters to Scottish aviation, because Southampton is owned by the same company that controls Glasgow and Aberdeen, and it's thought to be the preferred and officially anonymous bidder for Prestwick Airport.
As such, AGS may have less capital than it had planned on at the time the Scottish government welcomed its bid to take the loss-making Ayrshire airport off ministers' hands and taxpayers' books.
A rare survivor
For all the early talk of "devastation" from the Flybe collapse, a few hours later it didn't look quite so bad, at least for travellers. The uncertainty continues for a lot of Flybe staff and those contracted to the company.
Loganair was quick to pick up 16 of the more attractive routes - but to do so carefully. This is not so much a vulture operation as a relief, bringing with it recruitment of around 100 people.
At its Glasgow Airport headquarters, Jonathan Hinkles, the chief executive, took the opportunity of recent weeks - while Flybe, its owners and the UK government tried to settle on a rescue package - to plan for only the routes that are a good fit. He wants to reassure investors that he isn't overstretching the way others have.
It is only a year since he took a previous opportunity from the failure of an airline, in that case Flybmi. It brought city routes taking Loganair into deepest England and across the North Sea.
So while picking up on others' failure, Hinkles has to be careful not to become the next one. In only around 15 years of British flying, we've waved off not only Flybmi, but bmibaby, Scot Airways, later failing as Suckling Air, Monarch, Globespan and Thomas Cook. To that list, add Zoom, the Scots-based low-price carrier which was grounded in 2008, when its managing director was one Jonathan Hinkles.
Meanwhile, other airlines avoided failure by being merged into British Airways and Flybe. Through such change, Loganair is a rare survivor, and that's the way Mr Hinkles wants to keep it.
"The plan represents the outcome of several weeks of behind-the-scenes contingency planning work, during which we've evaluated many routes and aircraft," he says. "It's critical to the continued success of our own airline that we refrain from over-expansion, and that our growth can be delivered within our operational and financial means".
Competing with rail
So Loganair is picking up Flybe routes from bases it already operates in Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Inverness and Newcastle. These are particularly important for the energy industry, bringing offshore workers into Aberdeen from across the UK, with Eastern Airways continuing to operate joint Flybe routes to Humberside and Teesside.
The choice of those bases partly reflects Loganair's footprint in Scotland, climbing and maintaining altitude over nearly 60 years. It also reflects the fact that flying is a relatively attractive option for those travelling in and out of Scotland, simply because of distance. The same goes for Northern Ireland, with added seawater.
English and Welsh regional airports tend to compete less favourably with the train or road. As train use has gone up sharply, their scheduled flights in and out of London airports have fallen back. Add in "flight shame" for those who fret about their carbon footprint, and the more exposed English bases, where the absence of Flybe may hurt most, look like being in the south-west.
Take a holiday
Will other airlines be grounded or forced into takeovers in the coming months? Almost certainly, if the industry's global governing body is any guide. In late February (only a few days ago, remember?) IATA, the international air travel association, set out a projection of the losses that might be expected if coronavirus could be contained. That looked like a whopping $27bn (£21bn) loss of revenue, almost all of that in and around China, or more distant airlines that have routes into Asia.
But with the latest developments in the spread of the virus into Europe and North America, it has re-run its financial models. Containment of the current trends, to those countries with more than 100 cases already, would bring an 11% drop in passenger numbers and a loss of $63bn (£48bn), IATA reckons. Most of that loss would be in and around China.
But if there is extensive spread to countries which have more than 10 cases already, IATA forecasts a drop of 19% in air passengers worldwide, and 24% fewer in the UK and nearby European nations. In that case, the global hit would be a drop in revenue of around $113bn (£86bn), with western Europe and the UK taking nearly a third of that hit. The industry's downturn would be on the same scale as the financial crash of 2008.
Some are already taking action. Thursday brought 2,000 flight flight cancellations from Portugal's TAP, while Norwegian Air cut back on the frequency of trans-Atlantic flights, and planned a 15% cut in capacity.
British Airways and Ryanair have already said they're scaling back operations where the virus outbreak has so far hit hardest. United Airlines, one of America's big four, said it was cutting capacity by 20% on international routes, with a 10% cut on domestic US flights. Things look so severe at Virgin Atlantic that the chief executive is actually taking a pay cut.
Emirates and Etihad are asking staff to bring forward leave planned for later this year to the spring months, or to take a month of unpaid leave when it's looking alarmingly quiet.
For an industry that is held up as an example to every other in its attention to safety, that scale of financial risk looks overwhelming for airlines that aren't strapped in for some very bumpy turbulence.
Final frontier
On a more positive postscript about the aviation industry, it's worth noting recent success for aerospace in Scotland. Airbus orders are bringing more work and 100 more jobs to the Spirit Aerosystems factory next to Prestwick Airport, where they assemble the leading edges for passenger plane wings.
Airbus's sworn enemy, Boeing, has also raised its activities in Scotland, with a commitment to the advanced manufacturing centre - a landmark industrial building which has just secured planning permission at Inchinnan, next to Glasgow Airport.
The intention is to develop strong materials that cut weight and fuel use. Improving the industry's green credentials with that sort of research and development is a very high priority. Boeing also wants to plug into Scotland's growing expertise in space technology.
There's an irony somewhere in both aerospace giants looking to Scottish expertise and skill, while their battle over unfair subsidies has resulted in a 25% US tariff on imports of single malt Scotch, cashmere sweaters and shortbread.
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The mystery surrounding the unmanned drone that penetrated Israeli airspace on Saturday from the Mediterranean continues, although there is growing speculation that it could actually have been launched by the Lebanese Shia Islamist group, Hezbollah, with the support of Iran, the BBC's Jonathan Marcus reports. | Without the radar track of the unmanned drone it is impossible to confirm exactly where it came from - and the Israeli military are not saying.
But Sunday's mock air raids by Israeli jets on villages in southern Lebanon suggest that Israel believes the drone was launched by Hezbollah.
The Israeli press clearly believes that this was a Hezbollah operation - newspapers have published maps indicating that the drone was launched near the southern Lebanese port city of Sidon.
The suggestion is that it first flew out to sea, then south, appearing over southern Israel from the direction of the Mediterranean. Hezbollah has flown Iranian-supplied drones in the past across Israel's northern border.
But why might it have sent a drone to penetrate Israel's southern border?
Here there is only speculation.
Inevitably, Israeli analysts see the hand of Iran - Hezbollah's close ally.
One theory is that the drone was tasked with filming the Dimona nuclear plant in southern Israel.
In this light the whole affair becomes part of the ongoing struggle between Israel and Iran over Tehran's nuclear programme.
Israel is widely believed to be behind a campaign of sabotage and assassination aimed at slowing Iran's nuclear progress.
Filming Dimona could represent a significant propaganda coup for Tehran and the drone's penetration of Israeli air space would also represent a warning to Israel.
This was apparently an unarmed drone but as the technology spreads and develops, there is no reason why Iran and Hezbollah might not deploy armed drones in the future.
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What's it like being the victim of a live cyber-attack? What should you do to protect your company from further damage? And should you pay that ransom demand? Technology of Business eavesdropped on a "war games" exercise hosted by cyber security firm Forcepoint that was based on lots of real-life experiences. | By Mark WardTechnology correspondent, BBC News
Scenario
IT staff at fictional High Street optician Blink Wink's head office have been suckered by a phishing email. Someone clicked on a link to a spoof website because they thought the email looked legitimate. It wasn't. That was two months ago. Today, the proverbial hits the fan...
Tuesday 08:30
Tony Lewis, Blink Wink's IT administrator, starts his day clearing out the company's public email inbox of the usual junk and spam. One message stands out. His stomach lurches.
"I have more where this came from. We will be in touch shortly with our demands," the text says below someone's name, credit card details and email address.
Tony hopes it's a hoax, but can't take the risk. He swallows hard and calls the firm's security officer, Doug Hughes. Doug isn't impressed as he's on holiday in New York where it's 3:30am.
"This better be good," he growls. Tony forwards the suspect email.
"Have we validated the credit card number?" Doug asks, tension evident in his voice now. "Is it one of our customers?"
"I don't know yet," admits Tony.
"Well, when did we get this?" Doug snaps.
"Um... well... it seems we got it yesterday just after I'd left work, so I didn't notice it until this morning."
"So we're at least 12 hours into this?"
"Um, yeah," Tony mumbles sheepishly.
Tuesday 13:30
"We've got a second email," Tony tells Doug. "It's a ransom demand for £15,000 in the Litecoin crypto-currency. We have to pay by 22:00 BST or they'll delete all our customer records."
"What?" shouts Doug. "I thought they only had one?"
"Um, no. They claim to have them all."
In a sweat, Doug calls Blink Wink's legal counsel Grace Bolton for advice. She has to dial in several times as her headset is malfunctioning. Her voice keeps cutting out during the conversation.
"This is obviously a potential breach," she says. "So do not respond to that message. I'll need to review existing legislation so we know where we stand."
"What about the police?" asks Doug, his romantic city break now thoroughly ruined. "And the Information Commissioner? What about GDPR, who do we notify?"
Tuesday 15:30
Things are spiralling out of control for Blink Wink. The hackers have posted a tranche of customer names and credit card numbers on Pastebin, a public website for sharing text and source code.
Doug has now confirmed that the data is genuine.
"Shouldn't we shut down the website?" asks Tony. "Then we'll limit the risk."
Grace butts in. "Before we do that, who do we need to tell first? What's our data breach policy?"
"I thought that came from legal," says Doug.
"Aren't you the data protection officer?" Grace asks Tony.
"Nope, not me..."
"God, is it me?" asks Doug despairingly. "Anyway, if we pull the website that'll just draw attention to ourselves won't it? Not sure that's the right thing to do."
"Me neither," says Grace.
Blink Wink's head of public relations, Sandra Ellis, has been looped in to the conversation.
"This isn't looking good," she says rather obviously. "We've failed to protect our customers' private data. We could get really hammered for this."
She points out that the firm has a "buy one get one free" contact lens promotion running at the moment.
"We're driving people to the website right now. Are their details being stolen too?"
"Very possibly," says Doug. "We've got to shut down the site - or parts of it anyway. And then we've got to decide whether to pay the ransom."
Tuesday 17:00
Sandra Ellis has drafted a public statement but doesn't propose releasing it to the media until people start asking questions.
"We'll just say we are experiencing an incident and do it reactively," she says.
"Not an incident - a breach," Doug advises.
"No, don't use the word 'breach' - not yet anyway," chips in Grace, thinking of the legal ramifications. Tony bursts in on the conference call.
"We've found some malware! We saw an email come in that went to quarantine so we checked it out and it had an attachment. That could be it."
"You didn't click on it did you?" asks Doug, his day going from bad to worse.
"Um... I just thought it would speed things up..."
More Technology of Business
Doug swears and dips out of the call to get his security staff to check for any more damage.
Grace turns the conversation to informing the Information Commissioner's Office.
"We can phone or report it online," she tells them. "But we need to say what we did to mitigate the problem."
"Well, we were meant to get the latest threat detection software last year, but the guy who was looking into that left and wasn't replaced," says Tony. "It kinda didn't happen."
"Well don't tell the ICO that," Grace barks. "If we can't show we had adequate controls in place we could be in trouble. And the cyber-insurance people might not pay out either."
Later, Doug confirms that the latest phishing email was a red herring, but informs the team: "They did find a phishing email sent two months ago that linked to a log-in page made to look like the one for our cloud provider. That's how they got in.
"We've got to handle things better from now on," Doug concludes. "This will happen again, and it's only going to get worse."
So what should Blink Wink have done?
Richard Ford, chief scientist at Forcepoint, says: "Reacting late has put Blink Wink on the back foot. You need to move quickly in these situations otherwise the attackers dictate the pace.
"A poor knowledge of data breach laws has made the company vulnerable. They clearly didn't have a breach policy in place nor did they know who was responsible for each role or what they should be doing."
Richard says the firm should have:
And if your firm is the victim of a data breach, cyber expert Troy Hunt says it should:
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In China a tiny number of officials make key environmental decisions. But an increasingly savvy public could take to the streets unless the government changes its approach, argues environmental campaigner Ma Jun as part of a series of viewpoints on challenges facing China's new leaders. | In August 2011 about 12,000 people in China went for a "group stroll" in the northern city of Dalian. But this was no ordinary Sunday morning walk - it was a protest by another name, in a country where dissent is controlled.
The strollers carried banners voicing their rage at a chemical plant in the area. In China these strollers eventually forced the government to announce the relocation of the 10bn yuan ($1.6bn; £1bn) plant.
China has witnessed remarkable economic successes over the last three decades, accompanied by industrialisation and urbanisation. But ordinary people are coming to understand that this comes at a cost.
Citizens are beginning to see that development based on ever-greater consumption of resources is unsustainable. When China's new leaders take control, they will be confronted with a population increasingly protective of their environment.
China leads the world in energy consumption, carbon emissions and the release of major air and water pollutants, and the environmental impact is felt both regionally and globally.
Yet local officials have stuck with this model of development because it promotes GDP growth, and such measures are closely tied with their personal political careers.
They believe that the day when concerns over the environment and availability of resources actually constrain growth is far away.
Many others believe they are wrong.
People power
Over the last year, these environmental constraints have been felt in sudden and unexpected ways. August 2011 saw the mass protests against the PX chemical plant in Dalian, and this was followed by public protests against a metal smelter in Shifang and rallies against a waste-water pipeline in Qidong.
Faced with tens of thousands of "walking" protesters, the regional governments compromised in all three cases, cancelling huge investment plans or committing to relocate facilities on which tens of billions of yuan had already been spent.
These cases have far-reaching implications.
First, it shows that the public is more environmentally aware than ever before and reacts strongly, perhaps radically, to health risks. Second, microblogs and other social media have given people the tools to discuss social issues and to organise. Third, the government is reluctant to use force to suppress public actions which are aimed at defending fundamental environmental rights and health.
And so the new leadership in China, which is set to take the stage after China's Communist Party Congress in November, will face a major transformation unseen in China for 30 years.
For the past three decades, China's top-down and opaque methods of managing the environment have allowed for the fast-track sanctioning of large-scale projects in line with already approved plans, and ensured that those projects are not disrupted by local communities. Rapid economic growth has ensued.
But incidents such as those in Dalian have shaken this system. If this trend is not handled properly, not only will it be hard to achieve both development and environmental protection, but social stability may be at risk.
Things must change. But how?
Increasingly it is understood that the biggest obstacle to environmental protection in China is not a scarcity of funds or technology, but a lack of motivation.
We have created laws and regulations but the enforcement remains too weak and environmental lawsuits are still very difficult to file. Regulatory failings mean that the cost of breaking the law is far below that of obeying it - businesses are happier to pay fines than to control pollution.
Behind those failures lies an environmental management system in which every decision is still made by a tiny number of officials, developers and experts who make compromises at the expense of the environment and local communities.
Knowing the risks
It has been shown that public participation can limit powerful interest groups, while competing interests can help find a reasonable balance between development and environmental protection.
But China's environmental conundrums will not be solved by changes within government alone. New mechanisms are needed to allow the communities which may be affected by a given plan, and citizens concerned about the environment, to join in.
The cases in Shifang and Qidong have made many, including sensible government officials, rethink the top-down environmental management system. China needs to proceed step-by-step in the short term, but in the long run there needs to be a clear framework supported by key rights.
The environmental right to know, or giving the public the right to access information held by the government, is critical. If the public is unaware of environmental risks or decisions being made, or cannot get hold of any environmental data, participation becomes meaningless.
After that comes the right to participate. This is also crucial, as information itself will not clean up pollution.
Finally, the right to seek judicial redress comes into play when the first two rights are infringed upon, and again this requires further judicial reform.
Over the coming decade, we can predict that the public's environmental awareness will continue to increase and that there will be greater willingness and ability to take action.
Environmental change will inevitably occur.
But only a new approach to managing the environment, founded on fairness and transparency, and with open participation at its heart, can provide the motivation to ensure China's sustainability.
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Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner certainly divides opinion in Argentina. | Wyre DaviesRio de Janeiro correspondent
"I think that Cristina has been one of the top five leaders in the world", says Daniel Narezo, a Peronist activist and owner of the Buenos Aires bar Peron, Peron.
The bar is dedicated to the founders of the uniquely Argentine populist ideology that bears their name. The walls are not only plastered with images and speeches from Juan Domingo and Eva Peron, but also of Cristina, as she's known to Argentines - a worthy successor to Evita say her supporters.
"It will be almost impossible to replace her, just like Hugo Chavez in Venezuela," adds Narezo, clearly a fan of the outgoing president. "Perhaps her greatest achievement has been reengaging people with politics - young people in particular. With all her social achievements, that will be her legacy."
Others are less convinced about the state of the country Cristina is now leaving behind after eight years as president.
"Her government decided to spend the few dollars that were left at the Central Bank. So now the next president is going to find the Bank empty," says Martin Redrado, somewhat wryly.
Redrado should know because he quit his post as governor of the Central Bank of Argentina over what many regarded as the government's irresponsible and unsustainable spending.
"To give you an idea", Redrado tells me, "When I left the Central Bank there were $50 billion, real dollars, liquid dollars ….. now we are left with net reserves of just 10% of that. Basically, in the last year, they decided to use it all, so the bill is left for the next president."
Two differing views on perhaps why, despite Argentina's perilous economy and stubbornly high levels of poverty, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner's approval ratings are well over 50%.
Less than a year ago, CFK was staring into the political abyss.
The country had technically defaulted over a long-running dispute with a minority of overseas-based creditors. The central government had fallen out with the country's powerful agricultural sector over the high tax regime. Some of the ruling party's own supporters even took to the streets, protesting for better conditions.
Then, at the start of the year, in a high profile case that shook the country, a public prosecutor was found shot dead in his own apartment.
Alberto Nisman had been due to testify in Congress against the government. He'd even issued a draft arrest warrant for President Fernandez de Kirchner for allegedly helping to cover up the 1994 bombing of a Jewish cultural centre in Buenos Aires.
Whether suicide or murder, many blamed the government for Nisman's death and Cristina's stock could hardly have been lower.
But somehow she bounced back. Spending on popular welfare programmes went up, she struck trade and financial deals with China which gave Argentina access to vital credit and the Peronist movement's army of young activists was mobilised to work on her behalf.
As for Nisman, Argentina's notoriously complicated and drawn out legal system is still dealing with the case and no one expects a breakthrough soon. Most importantly for Cristina, little of the mud that was thrown in her direction has stuck.
Little wonder, perhaps, that at a political rally towards the end of this presidential campaign, Cristina let her hair down and started dancing on the stage - to the delight of her supporters but perhaps the embarrassment of the man standing next to her. He was Daniel Scioli, Cristina's handpicked successor as the "Front for Victory" (official Peronist) candidate.
Scioli will probably win either in this weekend's first round or in a November run-off, thanks to the Peronist Party machine. But the outgoing governor of Buenos Aires province lacks Cristina's charisma and her rapport with Argentina's working classes.
Perhaps the reason for Scioli's reluctance to dance with Cristina on stage was that he knew what was around the corner: rocketing inflation, embarrassing levels of poverty and inequality and those empty Central Bank coffers.
While the opposition candidates, dissident Peronist Sergio Massa and the centre-right Mauricio Macri, might try to tackle the looming crisis, Scioli says he's not set on wholesale changes.
Cristina's supporters say she's leaving Argentina in better shape that ever. Yes, this is still a wonderfully diverse, classy and artistically rich country but it's difficult to see how that claim can be justified.
Argentina has been in gradual decline for decades and despite her charisma, Cristina has presided over an increasingly divided nation.
Daniel Scioli might win these elections, thanks to the outgoing leader's endorsement and support, but he must know there's trouble ahead.
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We'll get to the G20 in a moment. But let's start with organisational psychology. There are some groups or teams that are greater than the sum of their parts, and there are others - that for all the talent and power they may have individually - are less. | Jon SopelNorth America editor@bbcjonsopelon Twitter
Think soccer. Think last year's European Championship. Then tiny little Iceland were the heroes of the competition - and not just because of their wonderful fans.
This team of part-timers played way above their ranking, there was solidarity, singleness of purpose, real determination. And think of England. Absurdly well paid and pampered players, whose showcase is the Premier League, the wealthiest in the world - and they were just a bunch of inked and primped individuals who seemed to have no team spirit. Dire. Just dire.
And so to the G20. It is not lousy like the England team were - I mean nothing could be as bad as that. But it is less than the sum of its parts.
What of the joint communiqué (that will have been toiled over by bureaucratic draftsmen for days to find a bland enough form of words that all the leaders can sign up to) will be remembered in six months' time? What ringing declaration will change lives? What plan of action will we look back on and think "turning point"?
No, I suspect this G20 will be remembered for two things.
The first, the appalling violence on the streets of Hamburg from a sizeable group of protestors who seemed hellbent on burning and looting (there was something surreal on Friday night, drinking a beer in the 20th floor bar of our hotel and watching the fires and the police on the street below - as if it was a rioting son et lumière spectacle put on for our entertainment).
And second - the first meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump.
I suspect if you asked Mr Trump what was most memorable for him, he too would say the Putin meeting - but also his day in Warsaw, when thousands of Poles chanted his name and "U-S-A". Remember the crowd does for him what a battery station does for a Tesla car.
His speech on the challenges facing the West was well crafted with an argument to make. And he just sounded - well - more committed to the idea of the "West" than he did when he was last in Europe at the Nato summit and the G7.
His definition of what constitutes Western values may not have been to everyone's tastes - but he also committed the US to Article 5 of Nato, with its pledge that an attack on one is an attack against all. And for those countries who are part of the Alliance and abut Russia, they'll have been reassured by that.
Which brings us to the meeting with the Russian leader. I've read analysis since suggesting that it was a big victory for Trump; and some arguing that Mr Putin came out of top.
But that is to view the encounter as a zero sum game. Maybe both men emerged feeling they had won. Putin was treated seriously, wasn't lectured on human rights and democracy (his regular complaint about what it was like dealing with Barack Obama), and the meeting went on for nearly two hours more than its allotted time.
Why does that matter? Because the Russian leader will feel he was treated as an equal to the US president with major things to discuss. Mr Trump will feel he has put the "Russia controversy" behind him. He raised it with Mr Putin, right, let's move on.
But that might be wishful thinking. Particularly after the Russians disclosed that the American president accepted the assurances of Mr Putin that Moscow hadn't interfered in last November's election.
The White House has not challenged that. And that leaves a very simple and astonishing point. Given the choice between accepting what his intelligence agencies have told him, and what Vladimir Putin has told him to be true, he's gone with the Russian.
And that might not play well in Washington, where there are myriad inquiries going on into the Trump campaign's links to Russia - and a Republican Party, who by and large given the same choice over who to believe, will go for the nation's intelligence professionals. Donald J Trump might want a reset in the relationship with Russia, but there are political constraints on him in Washington.
And then there are the decisions of the G20 itself. On two of the big ticket items - trade and climate change - it was really the G19 plus America. Mr Trump was intransigent in the face of appeals by other nations to recommit to the Paris climate change agreement. And there are real fears among European leaders that the president could unleash a trade war, over his insistence that America is being ripped off.
So if you're marking Mr Trump's card on how he got on, it really depends on where you stand on those issues. And as for the G20, it's hard to be more than the sum of its parts, when the biggest and most economically powerful member of the orchestra is humming a different tune.
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MSPs rejected the Assisted Suicide Scotland Bill by 82 votes to 36 following a debate in the Scottish Parliament . Nine MSPs did not vote and there were no abstentions. Here is a list of members and the side they supported.
| For the Bill
George Adam (Paisley) (SNP)
Jayne Baxter (Mid Scotland and Fife) (Lab)
Claudia Beamish(South Scotland) (Lab)
Colin Beattie (Midlothian North and Musselburgh) (SNP)
Marco Biagi (Edinburgh Central) (SNP)
Roderick Campbell (North East Fife) (SNP)
Jackson Carlaw (West Scotland) (Con)
Graeme Dey (Angus South) (SNP)
James Dornan(Glasgow Cathcart) (SNP)
Jim Eadie (Edinburgh Southern) (SNP)
Mary Fee (West Scotland) (Lab)
John Finnie (Highlands and Islands) (Ind)
Joe FitzPatrick (Dundee City West) (SNP)
Kenneth Gibson (Cunninghame North) (SNP)
Rob Gibson (Caithness, Sutherland and Ross) (SNP)
Christine Grahame (Midlothian South, Tweeddale and Lauderdale) (SNP)
Patrick Harvie (Glasgow) (Green)
Cara Hilton (Dunfermline) (Lab)
Jim Hume (South Scotland) (LD)
Alison Johnstone (Lothian) (Green)
Colin Keir (Edinburgh Western) (SNP)
Bill Kidd (Glasgow Anniesland) (SNP)
Richard Lochhead (Moray) (SNP)
Angus MacDonald (Falkirk East) (SNP)
Gordon MacDonald (Edinburgh Pentlands) (SNP)
Mike MacKenzie (Highlands and Islands) (SNP)
Stewart Maxwell(West Scotland) (SNP)
Liam McArthur (Orkney Islands) (LD)
Mark McDonald (Aberdeen Donside) (SNP)
Fiona McLeod (Strathkelvin and Bearsden) (SNP)
Elaine Murray (Dumfriesshire) (Lab)
Tavish Scott (Shetland Islands) (LD)
Kevin Stewart (Aberdeen Central) (SNP)
David Torrance (Kirkcaldy) (SNP)
Jean Urquhart (Highlands and Islands) (Ind)
John Wilson (Central Scotland) (Ind)
Against the Bill
Clare Adamson (Central Scotland) (SNP)
Alasdair Allan (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)
Christian Allard (North East Scotland) (SNP)
Jackie Baillie (Dumbarton) (Lab)
Claire Baker (Mid Scotland and Fife) (Lab)
Richard Baker (North East Scotland) (Lab)
Neil Bibby (West Scotland) (Lab)
Sarah Boyack (Lothian) (Lab)
Chic Brodie (South Scotland) (SNP)
Gavin Brown (Lothian) (Con)
Keith Brown (Clackmannanshire and Dunblane) (SNP)
Cameron Buchanan (Lothian) (Con)
Margaret Burgess (Cunninghame South) (SNP)
Malcolm Chisholm (Edinburgh Northern and Leith) (Lab)
Willie Coffey (Kilmarnock and Irvine Valley) (SNP)
Angela Constance (Almond Valley) (SNP)
Bruce Crawford (Stirling) (SNP)
Roseanna Cunningham (Perthshire South and Kinross-shire) (SNP)
Ruth Davidson (Glasgow) (Con)
Nigel Don (Angus North and Mearns) (SNP)
Bob Doris (Glasgow) (SNP)
Kezia Dugdale (Lothian) (Lab)
Annabelle Ewing (Mid Scotland and Fife) (SNP)
Fergus Ewing (Inverness and Nairn) (SNP)
Linda Fabiani (East Kilbride) (SNP)
Alex Fergusson (Galloway and West Dumfries) (Con)
Neil Findlay (Lothian) (Lab)
Murdo Fraser (Mid Scotland and Fife) (Con)
Annabel Goldie (West Scotland) (Con)
Rhoda Grant (Highlands and Islands) (Lab)
Iain Gray (East Lothian) (Lab)
Mark Griffin (Central Scotland) (Lab)
Hugh Henry (Renfrewshire South) (Lab)
Jamie Hepburn (Cumbernauld and Kilsyth) (SNP)
Fiona Hyslop (Linlithgow) (SNP)
Adam Ingram (Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley) (SNP)
Alex Johnstone (North East Scotland) (Con)
James Kelly (Rutherglen) (Lab)
Johann Lamont (Glasgow Pollok) (Lab)
John Lamont (Ettrick, Roxburgh and Berwickshire) (Con)
Richard Lyle (Central Scotland) (SNP)
Kenny MacAskill (Edinburgh Eastern) (SNP)
Lewis Macdonald (North East Scotland) (Lab)
Ken Macintosh (Eastwood) (Lab)
Hanzala Malik (Glasgow) (Lab)
Jenny Marra (North East Scotland) (Lab)
Paul Martin (Glasgow Provan) (Lab)
John Mason (Glasgow Shettleston) (SNP)
Michael Matheson (Falkirk West) (SNP)
Margaret McCulloch (Central Scotland) (Lab)
Margaret McDougall (West Scotland) (Lab)
Jamie McGrigor (Highlands and Islands) (Con)
Alison McInnes (North East Scotland) (LD)
Christina McKelvie (Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse) (SNP)
Aileen McLeod(South Scotland) (SNP)
Michael McMahon (Uddingston and Bellshill) (Lab)
Siobhan McMahon (Central Scotland) (Lab)
Stuart McMillan (West Scotland) (SNP)
Duncan McNeil (Greenock and Inverclyde) (Lab)
Nanette Milne (North East Scotland) (Con)
Paterson, Gil (Clydebank and Milngavie) (SNP)
Graeme Pearson (South Scotland) (Lab)
John Pentland (Motherwell and Wishaw) (Lab)
Willie Rennie (Mid Scotland and Fife) (LD)
Dennis Robertson (Aberdeenshire West) (SNP)
Robison, Shona (Dundee City East) (SNP)
Rowley, Alex (Cowdenbeath) (Lab)
Michael Russell (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)
Mary Scanlon (Highlands and Islands) (Con)
John Scott (Ayr) (Con)
Dr Richard Simpson (Mid Scotland and Fife) (Lab)
Drew Smith (Glasgow) (Lab)
Elaine Smith (Coatbridge and Chryston) (Lab)
Liz Smith (Mid Scotland and Fife) (Con)
Stewart Stevenson (Banffshire and Buchan Coast) (SNP)
David Stewart (Highlands and Islands) (Lab)
Nicola Sturgeon (Glasgow Southside) (SNP)
John Swinney (Perthshire North) (SNP)
Dave Thompson (Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch) (SNP)
Maureen Watt (Aberdeen South and North Kincardine) (SNP)
Paul Wheelhouse (South Scotland) (SNP)
Humza Yousaf (Glasgow) (SNP)
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The Queen is celebrating her official birthday on Saturday, 13 June.
| A Trooping the Colour ceremony and parade traditionally mark the day with honours given out in the Queen's Birthday Honours list.
These pictures recall the Queen's visits to Scotland over the years.
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The deputy chief constable of West Midlands Police will take over the top job in January, the force announced today. | David Thompson will take over from retiring Chief Constable Chris Sims.
Police and Crime Commissioner David Jamieson said: "David Thompson is clearly the best person in the country to do the job."
Mr Thompson said: "I will very much be looking to continue the fantastic work of Mr Sims."
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A man has denied murdering a mother of two. | Helen Bannister, 48, died a week after being taken to hospital last month after being injured in the Mayhill area of Swansea.
Swansea Crown Court heard the 37-year-old defendant admitted to an "unlawful assault" but there was "no intention of causing really serious harm".
A trial date was set for June, which is expected to last between seven and 10 days.
His defence barrister Stephen Donnelly told the court he was unable to advise his client on a plea for manslaughter as the post-mortem report had not yet been finalised.
Prosecuting barrister Carina Hughes told the court the crown hoped to be in receipt of the preliminary post-mortem report shortly.
Related Internet Links
HM Courts & Tribunals Service
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An arts complex is Gwynedd has officially reopened following the completion of a multimillion pound overhaul seven years in the planning. | Galeri in Caernarfon now has two cinema screens, along with a new exhibition space and reception.
There has not been a dedicated cinema in Caernarfon since the Majestic cinema closed in 1984.
To mark the reopening, the centre is hosting an evening with actor Rhys Ifans later talking about his career.
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Panels made from plastic and aluminium were installed on the sides of Grenfell Tower to make it warmer and drier. But the cladding has been blamed for helping flames to spread when fire broke out in June 2017, resulting in 72 deaths. | By Tom SymondsHome affairs correspondent, BBC News
Hundreds of thousands of people are living in buildings with similar cladding, which must now be removed at enormous cost, resulting in a crisis in building safety.
The public inquiry has questioned key employees of Arconic, the multinational metals company that made and supplied the cladding sheets for Grenfell.
So, what have we discovered?
1. This type of cladding burns easily
The big concern is about a type of cladding called Aluminium Composite Material, or ACM. It is made from polyethylene (PE), plastic sandwiched between two very thin sheets of aluminium.
France-based Arconic Architectural Products called its version of the product Reynobond PE, and sold it to big building projects all over the world. What is not in doubt is that this product is highly flammable.
2. The cladding consistently failed fire tests for 12 years before Grenfell
In 2005, Arconic commissioned tests in France to see how its Reynobond product would perform in a fire when installed in two standard ways known as "rivet" cladding systems and "cassette" systems.
Rivet systems are simply installed straight onto mounting brackets, with rivets. In "cassette" systems the cladding is folded into box shapes, like old-style cassette tapes, to hide the fixings.
Crucially, the cassette system was the design used at Grenfell Tower.
When the cassette version of Reynobond PE was tested, it failed to complete the test.
In the standard European fire test the results are classified from A1 (best) to F (worst).
The cassette version was given a rating of E. The folding appeared to allow flaming pools of plastic to form.
This version was to be tested again in 2011, 2014 and 2015. Each time the rating was E. Even the better-performing rivet version only managed a class C in more recent tests.
3. It didn't meet building standards in England
The bible for the construction industry in England is called Approved Document B. It sets out the fire performance standards required for all buildings.
Only products with a rating of B in the European fire test can be used on tall buildings above 18m. The Reynobond cladding with class E fell short of the required standard.
England has its own system of fire test ratings. The best rating is Class 0 (zero), which is acceptable instead of the European standard. But Reynobond PE's French manufacturer had never put this cladding through the relevant tests, the inquiry was told.
There were other ways to meet the regulations, including testing a design in a full-scale mock-up. That didn't happen at Grenfell Tower. Arconic now says it should have.
4. Arconic 'misled' British standards board
Test results are commercially sensitive. So a specialist body, the British Board of Agrement (BBA), assesses them and issues product certificates.
The BBA decided the evidence from the more successful European tests carried out on the Arconic cladding meant it "may be regarded" as having met the British standard.
But the Board was never shown the class E ratings for the cassette version of the cladding and knew nothing about them until a BBC investigation in 2018.
Arconic's president in France, Claude Schmidt, was forced to admit at the inquiry this would have "misled" anyone reading the certificate, including British architects.
5. The Grenfell disaster was predicted, a decade before
In 2007, Arconic marketing manager Gerard Sonntag attended a talk given by a consultant Fred-Roderich Pohl, who gave a dramatic warning of the risks of Aluminium Composite Material cladding. He said it had the same "fuel power" as a 19,000 litre truck of oil.
But he went further. Pohl reportedly asked "what will happen if only one building made out of PE is on fire and kills 60 to 70 persons."
Exactly the circumstances of the Grenfell fire in 2017.
Mr Sonntag's account of the presentation has been uncovered by the inquiry, which included it in evidence of what the company knew and when.
6. The company was aware of a 'Towering Inferno' warning following fires in the Middle East
In May 2013, the BBC reported on a worrying series of fires in the Middle East, blamed on ACM cladding from several producers.
Arconic noticed. Employees circulated an email they had received from a sales manager working for a competitor, Richard Geater at 3A Composites, who described cladding which had been sold as fire resistant "burning like paper".
It was a "cheat", Geater concluded.
Arconic's UK sales manager, Deborah French, was asked at the inquiry: why not attach a health warning to the product?
"At the time," she said, the level of risk "wasn't so obvious".
7. Cladding sales continued, despite the risk
The company's UK sales manager, Deborah French, told the inquiry British buyers were more likely to request Reynobond PE and fit the cladding as "cassettes", the variant which resulted in poor fire tests, as they allowed for a "cleaner" appearance, with the fixings hidden from view.
In France, there was a move towards a "fire retardant" version, but not in Britain.
The company's technical manager Claude Wehrle, had been instrumental in commissioning the fire tests. He warned colleagues, and even some clients, about the results, even that they should be kept "very confidential", and sales continued.
In the minutes of a meeting in 2011, Mr Wehrle wrote that the cladding "has a bad behaviour exposed to fire", but, "we can still work with national regulations which are not as restrictive".
8. Arconic claimed it wasn't responsible for how its cladding was used
Since the fire, the company has stopped selling Reynobond PE. But it argues it is simply the manufacturer of a raw material, supplied to specialist "fabricators" who make cladding systems.
Arconic says it can't possibly know the end uses for its products, and it is for designers to check they could meet building regulations.
However, an email sent in May 2013 by sales manager Deborah French to a client gave a different impression.
She said the company could "control and understand" which type of cladding is being used in building projects because it only worked closely with a "very small group of approved fabricators".
"We are able to follow what type of project is being designed/developed," she wrote, and then offer "the right Reynobond specification".
Questioned about it, Ms French claimed she had not been telling the truth when writing the email.
9. The company knew it was selling to Grenfell
But, the inquiry has evidence Deborah French, who led the sale of cladding for Grenfell Tower, knew it was for a public residential building.
In January 2013, four years before the fire, she was sent "artistic renderings of what Grenfell Tower might look like" after completion of the work, according to her witness statement.
But she maintained throughout days of evidence that she had "no technical knowledge, and did not get involved in the design of projects".
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Our fridges are stuffed with food that could also be kept in the cupboard. In the past, people kept butter, eggs and sauces in the pantry without getting ill. So why do many of us insist on keeping it all chilled? | By Kate PalmerBBC News
A supermarket has begun stocking ketchup in the fridge section as well as on shelves in a bid to appease both camps.
Asda's poll of some 2,600 people found opinion was split, with 54% saying ketchup belonged in the cupboard and 46% saying they stored it in the fridge.
Some shoppers took to social media to say which part of the shop they would be heading towards.
But Polly Russell, a food historian from BBC Two's Back In Time For Dinner, said modern-day food chilling could be "bizarre".
Many brands we recognise today, such as Lea & Perrins Worcestershire Sauce, HP Sauce and Heinz Tomato Ketchup, were all sold before households had fridges, she explains.
"They were absolute life-savers for housekeepers - adding flavour to food that might be slightly bland or monotonous," Dr Russell said.
Their acidity levels, coupled with salt and sugar content, means they were - and still are - microbiologically safe to keep at room temperature.
"Households had no fridge, only cool boxes, or ice deliveries if it was a wealthy family."
In the latest series of Further Back In Time For Dinner, the Robshaw family are sent to a 1900s house - finding a kitchen with a cool-cupboard and overstuffed parlour instead of a fridge or freezer.
So when did this change?
As late as 1961, 20% of British households had a fridge, Dr Russell's research found. Yet half of these households probably owned a television.
It was only from 1968 that half of Britons owned a fridge.
Nearly 70 years on, we are fridge-obsessed.
Ms Russell said there was now an "increased anxiety" over food safety, meaning that we tend to chill foods when we do not need to.
"Shoppers don't trust the food they buy and hear mixed messages about what is and isn't safe," she said.
But some people are attempting to resist our reliance on refrigeration.
"If we get more people into preserving food, we can reduce the need for a fridge," says Caroline Aitken, a food preservation teacher from Dartmoor.
Mrs Aitken, 38, teaches "permaculture", a movement that began in the 1970s and promotes self-sufficiency, growing food naturally and minimising waste.
"We've gradually lost our larders and now we've got very hot centrally heated houses," she said, adding that there was a "cultural fear" of leaving food out of the fridge.
She suggests pickling food from scratch using salt and water and keeping sugary preserves such as jam in the larder.
"Sauerkraut and kimchee are great to experiment with," she said. "I generally add three tablespoons of salt for every two kilos of shredded vegetables."
Mrs Aitken says people can go "over the top" with keeping food in the fridge, even once it has been cooked.
"You can have cold-store outside," she said. "If I've cooked a big stew I sit the pot in a room with a stone floor and it's perfectly fine to have the next day."
According to the government, the electricity costs of running a fridge bought in 2013 over a 12.5-year lifespan will total about £270, although it may be difficult to do without one altogether.
Even Mrs Aitken says she keeps some things, like her homemade yoghurt, in the fridge. "I just don't go over the top: tomatoes, citrus fruits, eggs, they shouldn't be in there."
Ketchup, eggs, butter and fruit: Is it bananas to keep them in the fridge?
Sources: NHS Food Safety advice, Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences journal
We would like to see what's inside your fridge, whether it's edible or not. Please send your pictures to yourpicsor tweet us.
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It's make your mind up time. Again. | By David HendersonBBC Scotland business correspondent
Two and a half years after Scotland's first independence referendum, the prospect of "indyref2" looms once more.
And this presents another potential headache for Scottish business.
Last year's Brexit vote prompted some company bosses to reach for the aspirins, as they looked to an uncertain future outside the EU.
Now, others may be opening the medicine cabinet, for a different reason.
Brexit
Brexit looks set to fundamentally change the way the UK trades with the continent.
Free movement of people, goods, services and capital - the four freedoms enshrined in EU treaties - won't apply to the UK after Brexit.
And the UK will most likely be outside the European Single Market and the European Customs union.
That risks disrupting Scotland's trading relationship with the continent - a relationship worth £12.3bn in 2015.
Indyref2
Some fear Scottish independence would have a similar impact within the United Kingdom, with a Yes vote creating a new relationship between Scotland and the remainder of the UK.
In 2015, Scotland's trade with the UK was worth £49.8bn. That's four times as much as its trade with the EU.
The SNP government stresses that it wants to prevent barriers to trade emerging between an independent Scotland and the rest of the UK.
But over time, different laws could create a myriad of changes to this level playing field.
Hard choices
Businesses tend to dislike political and economic uncertainty.
Little surprise then, that few Scottish firms were hungry for a dose of constitutional politics in the form of a Brexit vote.
And the prospect of yet another long-drawn out referendum campaign fills many business people with gloom.
First Minister Nicola Sturgeon wants to hold the vote between the autumn of 2018 and spring of 2019.
The prime minister, Theresa May, may want to knock back the timing of the vote even later - perhaps as late as 2020, after any Brexit deal is concluded.
That means years of uncertainty - and for business, an unappealing choice:
On the one hand, an independent Scotland, outside the UK, but looking to rejoin the EU.
And on the other, Scotland within the UK, but outside the EU.
There's no third option on the ballot paper.
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Joe Biden's plan to tackle climate change has been described as the most ambitious of any mainstream US presidential candidate yet. Our environment correspondent Matt McGrath considers what he wants to do, and how he might get it done. | By Matt McGrathEnvironment correspondent
Much will be made about Joe Biden's pledge to re-join the Paris climate agreement, the international pact designed to avoid dangerous warming of the Earth.
President Trump pulled out of the deal after the Obama administration had signed up in 2016, and during the drawn-out election count, Mr Biden confirmed that reversing the decision would be one of his first acts as president.
But key to his credibility on the international stage will be his domestic policies on cutting carbon emissions.
More radical Democrats such as congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez have put forward a proposal called the Green New Deal, which would eliminate carbon emissions from most sources over a decade. The Biden climate plan is more moderate.
However, if enacted, it would still be the most progressive climate strategy the US has ever attempted.
Net zero by 2050
Mr Biden is proposing to make US electricity production carbon-free by 2035 and to have the country achieve net zero emissions by the middle of the century.
Reaching net zero requires that any carbon emissions are balanced by absorbing an equivalent amount from the atmosphere by, for example, planting trees.
Once in office, Joe Biden wants to spend $2 trillion over four years to drive down emissions by upgrading four million buildings to make them more energy efficient.
He wants to spend heavily on public transport, to invest in electric vehicle manufacturing and charging points and give consumers financial incentives to trade up to cleaner cars.
All of these options have one additional component apart from cutting carbon: they put people back to work.
Andrew Light, a former senior climate official in the Obama administration, says Mr Biden is focused on what lowers emissions and increases jobs at the same time.
"There will be a big push on electric vehicles, a big push on efficient buildings, both residential and offices, a big push on creating a new kind of civilian conservation corps and doing a lot of nature-based solutions on climate change.
"You've got a really good menu to choose from in all of these different sectors."
Mr Biden has also said he will not allow fracking on federal land. Fracking is a drilling process in which chemicals are injected into rocks to liberate natural gas and oil, and is controversial because of its environmental impact.
However, since about 90% of it occurs on state or private land, the vast majority of fracking will be unaffected.
Global temperature target 'within striking distance'
The Paris deal sought to keep global temperatures "well below" 2.0C (3.6F), but in 2018 UN scientists clarified how much of a difference it would make to limit the rise to 1.5C.
The 1.5C target could prevent small island states from sinking beneath the waves, it could ensure that millions of people avoid the disasters of extreme weather, it could limit the chances of an ice-free Arctic in the Summer.
Scientists say that Mr Biden's goal of reaching net zero emissions by mid-century could have significant implications for the 1.5C target.
"With Biden's election, China, the USA , EU, Japan, South Korea - two thirds of the world economy and over 50% of global greenhouse gas emissions - would have [commitments toward reaching] net zero greenhouse gas emissions by mid-century," says Bill Hare, who's part of the Climate Action Tracker, which monitors the world's carbon cutting plans.
"This could be an historic tipping point."
For the first time ever, this puts the Paris Agreement's 1.5C limit within striking distance, he says.
More compromise
There will be a Democrat in the White House, but the Republican party currently controls the US Senate and has so far shown a marked reluctance to spend money on stimulating the economy, despite the pandemic.
That position might change if - as some have forecast - a January run-off election in Georgia gives Democrats control of the Senate.
But if not, there are still grounds for President-elect Biden to believe the upper house may be open to some of his climate plans.
While President Trump has taken a strident anti-climate approach, there has been a softening of rhetoric from some Republicans in the last couple of years.
There are already precedents of co-operation to point to. In September, Democrats and Republicans co-operated on a bill to cut the use of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), a family of gases commonly used as refrigerants. They include some of the most powerful greenhouse gases known to science.
The same month, the Senate also passed a bill called the Bipartisan Wildlife Conservation Act, intended to improve species conservation and protect vital ecosystems.
Joe Biden also knows better than many how navigate the upper house; he was elected to the senate six times before serving as vice-president under Barack Obama.
If the president-elect can structure his plans so that they create jobs and new infrastructure, while also tackling carbon emissions, he may be able to find a way forward that works for both sides of the aisle.
"I think you could get a lot of common ground just around good policies that also have climate implications," says Katie Tubb, a senior policy analyst from the conservative think tank, the Heritage Foundation.
A Supreme Court problem?
If he fails to agree legislation with the Senate, President-elect Biden will have to issue executive orders, similar to the way that Presidents Obama and Trump overcame such obstacles.
President Trump used them to roll back dozens of environmental regulations on the production of oil and gas, and on mileage standards for cars and trucks.
It's expected that many of those Trump rollbacks will themselves be rolled back at the start of the Biden administration.
But the weakness of the executive approach is that it is open to legal challenges. President Obama had to use executive orders to try and implement a key climate policy, the Clean Power Plan, but they were blocked by the Supreme Court.
If President-elect Biden goes down this route, the Supreme Court could present a potential stumbling block.
The court would ultimately rule on any litigation over his climate proposals, and with the court's strong conservative majority, that could be a significant problem for Joe Biden.
Glasgow becoming the new Paris
President Trump's decision to withdraw from the Paris accords took effect on 4 November - the day after the election.
A month after the Biden administration informs the United Nations of its decision to re-join, the US will once again be part of the global effort to curb climate change - much to the delight of climate diplomats.
"It would definitely be a positive move, not only because they are a big player, but I think because it really emphasises the fact that the US believes in the science of climate change," says Carlos Fuller, the lead negotiator for the Alliance of Small Island States (Aosis) in annual UN climate meetings.
These annual COP - conference of the parties - meetings are the mechanism by which countries agree to lower their carbon emissions. And US leadership is absolutely critical for this process.
With China, Japan and South Korea having set long-term goals to cut carbon, expectations are rising that the UN's COP26 climate summit, which convenes in Glasgow in November 2021, may turn out to be a success.
The UK government, which will run the Glasgow talks, will want every country to update their national carbon cutting plans with tougher targets than they submitted in in 2015. They will also want as many nations as possible to commit to net zero emissions by 2050.
The return of the US to the climate fold, under President-elect Biden, will bring both goals within reach.
Follow Matt on Twitter.
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Jurors in the trial of four people accused of being part of a £26m burglary plot have been told not to be "unfairly prejudiced" by evidence that one of the suspects is an escort. | Judge Martin Edmunds QC issued the warning to the jury ahead of closing speeches at Isleworth Crown Court.
Maria Mester is accused of conspiracy to burgle the west London homes of three celebrities - including Tamara Ecclestone.
The 47-year-old denies the charges.
The court was previously told that she, her son Emil Bogdan Savastru, and two other men were part of a plot to target the homes of Ms Ecclestone and Chelsea manager Frank Lampard and a house owned by the family of former Leicester City chairman Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha.
Four other men, who cannot be named for legal reasons, are alleged to have carried out the raids between 1 and 13 December.
The trial has heard Ms Mester was arrested at Stansted Airport wearing Ms Ecclestone's jewellery and said she only returned to London from Milan because she heard her son had been detained at Heathrow Airport the previous day.
In evidence she admitted to travelling around the world for "wealthy clients" in the United Arab Emirates, Malaysia and Belarus, but found herself in Orpington, south-east London, last December, with one of the alleged burglars for €6,000.
In his legal directions to the 11 jurors, Judge Edmunds said: "In the course of the case we have heard that Mester worked as an escort.
"You may or may not approve of that, but ensure that it does not unfairly prejudice you when you are considering her case."
Ms Mester's childhood friend Sorin Marcovici, 53, and hotel concierge Alexandru Stan, 49, deny all charges, including conspiracy to burgle.
Ms Mester and Mr Savastru also deny conspiracy to commit money laundering.
The trial continues.
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The parent group of British Airways and Iberia has reported a 390m euro ($476m; £306m) loss for the six months to the end of June and warned it: "will not be able to avoid job losses". | That compares with a 39m euro pre-tax profit in the same period last year.
Spanish carrier Iberia was worst hit. Its operating losses widened to 263m euros in the period.
International Airlines Group said it would finalise a restructuring plan for Iberia by the end of September.
Revenue rose 10% to 8.5bn euros compared with 7.8bn euros in the same period last year.
Passenger numbers rose and IAG made more money for each passenger.
But that increased revenue was more than offset by the 25% rise in fuel costs and charges from the process of restructuring its business.
Despite those higher fuel charges, UK airline British Airways turned a small operating profit of 13m euros at the start of the year.
The group's main problems reside with its Spanish carrier Iberia.
In a statement, chief executive Willie Walsh warned: "Iberia's problems are deep and structural and the economic environment reinforces the need for permanent structural change. We are currently working on a restructuring plan for Iberia which we anticipate will be finalised by the end of September."
"Inevitably, we will not be able to avoid job losses as part of this process," he added.
As well as the cost of future redundancy payouts Iberia faces particular problems due to the worsening economic conditions in its home market of Spain.
Originally, IAG had forecast it would break even this year.
"However, in the light of the Spanish macro headwind, we now expect to make a small operating loss in 2012," said Mr Walsh.
IAG shares ended Friday 5.2% lower at 151p.
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As a hack who has seen eight chancellors come and go since first taking a professional interest in the stewardship of the economy, it is slightly tempting to yawn and ignore George Osborne's claim tonight that he will put boosting productivity at the forefront of his policies. | Robert PestonEconomics editor
If I were cynical I would say that it is a shame that the so-called productivity challenge hardly featured in the general election battle.
Or I might point out that successive governments and chancellors have vowed to improve the UK's internationally sub-standard productivity, to very little effect.
But I am minded to say that Osborne's focus on productivity tonight at the CBI dinner matters, not least because it represents an important shift of emphasis at the Treasury - towards an agenda for economic growth, rather than the almost exclusive focus of the previous coalition government on reducing the large deficit between public sector revenues and outgoings.
However, just to be clear, there is no hint from the Chancellor of any backing away from very substantial welfare and ministerial cuts in his exceptional looming budget.
'Flatlining'
There are a few points to make about what most economists will see as a belated statement of the bleedin' obvious by the Chancellor, namely that "improving the productivity of our country is the route to raising living standards of living for everyone in this country".
First is that he acknowledges that productivity or output per hour worked in the UK cannot be suddenly turned from 30% below US and German levels to parity - or indeed that the unexpected flatlining of productivity since the Crash of 2008, which is the biggest single cause of the flatlining of earnings, will be transformed at a stroke into supra-normal growth.
Thus he told the business leaders of the CBI that the aim was to "ensure higher living standards for the next generation to come".
Or to put it another way, when it comes to productivity, there are no quick fixes.
Second, much of what's required to boost output per hour and per worker requires hard and politically controversial decisions - to, for example, push through new road, rail and housing schemes against nimby opposition.
Osborne implies he's up for the fight, in saying "our physical infrastructure is not nearly good enough, and previous governments ducked the difficult decisions".
Apart from anything else it is typically a matter of shame and regret for British ministers that their habit of denigrating the French economy seems less compelling when French productivity is much higher than British, thanks in part to the higher quality of Gallic infrastructure.
One implication is that as and when Sir Howard Davies's commission recommends there should be a new runway at Heathrow, the Chancellor and prime minister will not back away from approval, even in the face of opposition from Boris Johnson.
Future prosperity
So what else does the Chancellor say we need to do to get productivity moving belatedly in an upward direction? His list is "transport, broadband, planning, skills, ownership, childcare, red-tape, science, innovation, finance".
Not much to do then.
But the acknowledgement that "our future prosperity depends on it [sorting productivity]" will be applauded by the many economists who fear that for years they've been ignored as they bemoaned our productivity failure.
Even so, don't expect the Chancellor to admit that his record in the last parliament was sub-optimal. He insisted: "I do know that I'd much rather have the productivity challenge than the challenge of mass unemployment".
In other words, if to many it looks as though our economy put the cart before the horse, with dramatic falls in unemployment while productivity languished, George Osborne is grateful that employers put recruitment before investment in labour-saving kit.
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A man has been arrested in Brazil after trying to put out the Olympic flame by throwing a bucket of water over it. | The 27-year-old later told police the act had been a "dare", police said.
Video footage showed a spray of water being thrown over the group carrying the torch in Maracaju in central Brazil.
The torch relay will cover 20,000km (12,400 mile) and 300 Brazilian cities before the flame arrives in Rio de Janeiro for the Games opening ceremony.
The incident comes a week after a rare jaguar was shot and killed after being used in an Olympic torch ceremony.
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Police have received 20 calls after setting up a phone line to coincide with a television documentary about missing York chef Claudia Lawrence. | Missing - The Claudia Lawrence story was shown on Channel 4 on Friday night and follows her family in the 16 months since she was last seen.
North Yorkshire Police said the phone line would stay open over the weekend.
The search for Miss Lawrence was scaled down last month but officers said people could call with new leads.
Her father Peter Lawrence said he hoped the programme would prompt new information.
Miss Lawrence, who was 35 years old when she went missing, was last seen leaving her workplace on 18 March 2009.
Her disappearance is being treated as suspected murder.
The telephone number is 01609 768 181.
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Recycling trucks in the Bath area are being temporarily rested due to the heatwave damaging the electrical circuits of the waste compactors. | Bath and North East Somerset Council has said as a result more trucks are being drafted in for its collections.
Overheated circuit boards for the waste compactors are now being modified to help them cope with the heatwave.
The council said this was a problem other councils were facing in the UK.
Cabinet member Martin Veal added: "We ask residents to bear with us.
"This is an issue local authorities across the country are having to deal with during this spell of exceptionally high temperatures."
Recycling and waste collections are set to return to normal as soon as possible, the council added.
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A selection of your pictures of Scotland sent in between 5 and 12 March.
Send your photos to [email protected]. Please ensure you adhere to the BBC's rules regarding photographs that can be found here.
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Energy giant SSE has made a commitment to create new apprenticeships and also recruit staff from communities close to planned new developments.
| The aims are set out in an agreement partnership with the University of the Highlands and Islands (UHI).
SSE and UHI said the collaboration would boost local job opportunities in areas such as Caithness, Sutherland and the Great Glen.
The partnership includes the creation of a new apprenticeship programme.
SSE said it would it would "target" local areas around proposed new developments for the recruitment and training of future employees.
The company is behind proposals for an £800m hydro electric scheme in Lochaber and a £700m subsea cable to link renewable energy projects on the Western Isles with mainland Scotland.
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A man has been stabbed at a Birmingham train station. | The victim, a man in his 20s, was found by officers at Perry Barr station at about 18:40 GMT on Friday, West Midlands Police said.
He was taken to hospital but his injuries are not thought to be life-threatening or life-changing. He continues to be treated in hospital.
CCTV cameras are being checked and police are speaking to witnesses as part of their investigations.
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Over the last 15 years, Cornwall has received more than £1bn of EU structural investment. Don't worry if that fact has passed you by. Plenty of the people I met in Cornwall appear to be unaware of it too. | By Katie RazzallSpecial correspondent, BBC Newsnight
I'm testing out how the EU impacts on people's lives for a Newsnight series, Referendum Road. First stop, five hours by train from Westminster, even further by plane from Brussels, was Penzance.
From the Europhiles' perspective, Cornwall has lots to thank Europe for. The Council of Europe gave Cornish protected minority language status back in 2002 and Cornish clotted cream and pasties are among the local delicacies given special EU protection. And then there's the small matter of millions of pounds.
But Matthew Lobb, a 26-year-old volunteer, told me: "Living down here, it's just a dead end… I haven't heard of no money being put into Cornwall."
Lynn Watson, a resident on Penzance's Treneere estate, said: "I don't know where the money from the EU has gone, but it hasn't come here." She then added that she doesn't want to leave the EU.
Last year, Treneere was designated as the most deprived area of Cornwall. I visited the Whole Again Communities project, running a soup kitchen for anyone in need, and met Brian Collett, who was on his way back from a local food bank.
Life's been tough since he left the navy and he told me he's homeless and now living in a tent. "But I suppose a tent is better than a doorway," he said. "And they do keep telling me the sun is going to come out."
On the deprivation index, parts of Cornwall are poorer than regions of Poland, Lithuania and Hungary and, because of that, it's eligible for EU funds. The aim is to have a long-term impact on the economy.
Between 2000 and 2014, £888m was invested in Cornwall from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and the European Social Fund (ESF). The money has financed infrastructure projects, airports, universities, road widening schemes, superfast broadband and local businesses.
Another £486m has been earmarked between 2014 and 2020.
But when it comes to the referendum, it appears hard cash doesn't automatically buy loyalty.
Europe 'not locally democratic'
As Stephen Cummins, a Penzance resident buying his fish from a local door-to-door salesman, put it: "My initial reaction was to get out, even though Cornwall has had all these millions - because I'm thinking nationally. But I'm still not certain, there are too many unknowns."
The unknowns of a Brexit (there is no word for that in Cornish) were one explanation given by folk who told me they'll vote to stay in. But I also found plenty threatening to vote to leave.
As in so many coastal areas, the fishing fraternity are keen "outers". They talk of the good old days before EU quotas, but it's not only about fish.
Martin Clive, who runs Newlyn Fish Co, told me: "I don't like the way Europe doesn't feel locally democratic."
Darren Shah, busy filleting the fish that had been bought at dawn at Newlyn market to send to the more lucrative London market, said: "It's time we looked after ourselves."
A YouGov survey suggested Cornwall is veering Eurosceptic as we head towards 23 June. Part of the issue may be that the EU doesn't obviously appear to trumpet its investment. Unlike in some other parts of Europe, I barely saw that blue EU sign with its familiar yellow stars.
EU 'benefits Cornwall'
One exception is Carley's Organic Foods. Based just outside Truro, it is one of more than 25,000 Cornish businesses to have benefited from ERDF investment. On the wall outside its new sustainable premises, part-funded by the EU, there's a little EU logo.
Owner John Carley explained that the £300,000 investment boosted turnover significantly and meant the firm could expand from three to nine employees in a place where every job counts.
He's worried that the Cornish - and the British in general - will vote to leave the EU: "I suppose there's a degree of contrariness in Cornwall. We don't like to be told what to do. I sincerely hope the people of Cornwall in the majority will realise the benefits we get from being in the EU," he said.
Cornwall is the only English area that has access to this extra EU structural investment, because its GDP is less than 75% of the EU member average. The county has less than 1% of the UK population, but the funds earmarked in the six years up to 2020 account for 5% of the EU's UK investment.
It's a substantial sum and some here are worried that the county - and the nation - could be heading for Brexit without properly considering the consequences.
Susan Stuart spent the best part of two years renovating Penzance's Chapel House, which she's turned into a hotel. She's backing local regeneration plans, which include hopes for new flood defences, cycle paths and a digital hub.
She told me they couldn't fund this without going to Europe and an out vote means "we wouldn't get the funding".
Something for the Cornish to mull over as they get closer to referendum day.
Watch Katie's full report on Newsnight via BBC iPlayer (UK only).
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A company has won a £315,000 European investment to take part in a cell therapy project to help treat cancer.
| Cardiff-based TrakCel develops software for clinical trials, and will join forces with research groups and manufacturers for products which are being used to fight cancer.
It aims to improve the performance and safety of cellular cancer therapies.
The Welsh government has welcomed the investment.
Finance Minister Jane Hutt said: "It's fantastic news that pioneering technology developed in Wales will be playing a key role in a European project with such ground-breaking potential."
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As our identities become more entrenched on the web, a slew of apps want us to return to an earlier era of anonymity on the internet. But can apps such as Secret - which has just launched on Android - really keep our identities, well, secret? | By Kim GittlesonBBC technology reporter, New York
Think back to an AOL chatroom.
Wait for the modem to sing its song, click the connect button, find a room - and inevitably, the first question you're asked as soon as you log in is "a/s/l?" - age/sex/location.
In other words: "Who are you?"
For many people, this was the defining feature of the internet: anonymity. A place where screen names and loose identification protocols made the web, by default, an opaque place.
Today, our digital identities adhere ever more closely to our real lives, with Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram allowing real-time and often permanent imprints of our existence.
While alleviating one concern - identification - they have created another: is there any way to be open on the internet anymore, without fear of reprisal?
That is why a whole host of firms are arguing that it is time to return to, or at least make space for, anonymity.
The best version
"You look at all of these services like Facebook and Instagram, and they're all about let me show you the best version of me," argues Whisper co-founder Michael Heyward.
"It's essentially this highlight reel - Whisper is about showing people the behind the scenes stuff that we're not always comfortable posting on Facebook."
Whisper allows users to download an app and then post anonymous statements - everything from "do you like this outfit?" to "I'm worried I suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder". Users can then like statements they identify with or think are funny.
Mr Heyward likens it to the Catholic concept of a confession - but a confession that also operates as a business. Whisper has raised over $60m (£36m) since being founded two years ago.
"I think we're really well positioned to own anonymity," he says.
Big business
But Mr Heyward isn't the only one to realise that both the intrusion of social networks into our "real lives" and the Edward Snowden US government spying revelations have led to an increased desire for anonymity on the web.
And, of course, capitalising on that desire for anonymity could be big business.
Secret, founded in October and launched in January by two former Google employees, Chrys Bader-Wechseler and David Byttow, has already raised $11.5m. Unlike Whisper, it accesses your phone's contacts and only shows you Secrets from friends or friends of friends.
It was a hit with iPhone users in Silicon Valley, where they posted juicy titbits, including news of which tech start-ups had been bought for millions and, most notably, broke news of layoffs at Nike.
And the app has just been made available in all countries both on iOS and Android.
Mr Bader-Wecheseler says that the duo didn't design the app with the concept of whistle-blowing in mind.
But now "we constantly ask ourselves is whistle-blowing important, and we think so".
Marketing gimmick
But thinking whistle-blowing is important and promising anonymity are two very different things.
"The problem with apps on mobile phones is that, well, it's a mobile phone," says Runi Sandvik, a technologist at the Center for Democracy and Technology.
"It's tied to you in some way or another and this identifier is often passed to the makers of these applications.
So even if these apps on their website are promising you anonymity, if asked or required they will hand over your information to law enforcement."
Ms Sandvik says that promises of anonymity are thus essentially a "marketing gimmick" because "you don't want to advertise an app that promises semi-anonymity".
And it is not just users who could find themselves in hot water.
University of Maryland law professor James Grimmelman notes that Snapchat, the self-deleting photo messaging app, recently got into hot water with US authorities over promises that images could not be stored.
"If users can be identified you cannot promise anonymity," he says.
He adds that the Nike leak also could cause legal issues, including leaking trade secrets and raising questions about insider trading.
Getting swept along
That's why perhaps "it's more about pseudo-nymity - the ability to have a real identity but being able to turn it off when you want to," says Dil-Domine Leonares, founder of an app called Breakr, which allows users anonymously join chatrooms based on their location.
That is a sentiment echoed, in some part, by Secret's founders, who insist the app isn't all about whistle-blowing.
"Facebook trained us to curate our identity - I think Secret can train us in empathy," says Mr Bader-Wechseler.
But that assumes - or presumes - that what people have to share is not mean, or slanderous, or just simply banal.
One recent Secret read: "Just spent 45 min trying to teach my cat a trick. He didn't get it. We'll work on it tomorrow."
Not exactly the stuff that moves mountains.
But then again, scroll down a bit and I found "Twitch.tv is rumored to have been acquired for $1b. Any big paydays for non-execs?" - something a bit more up my alley as a technology journalist.
Scroll down once more, this time on Whisper, and I found out that the ex-wife of a prominent technology executive was now dating.
And therein lies the question: are these apps about sharing feelings that can't be expressed publicly, leaking corporate secrets, or, simply trading in something that pre-dates the iPhone: gossip?
There's also the less philosophical, more practical issue, the word that is almost never spoken in the bubbly world of Silicon Valley: profits.
"We think about it every now and then but we haven't invested resources in solving this problem," says Mr Bader-Wechseler.
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A man who was hit by a minibus in Cardiff city centre suffered life-threatening injuries.
| The pedestrian, 55, was taken to the city's University Hospital of Wales after the incident on Boulevard de Nantes at 01:45 GMT.
South Wales Police said the man's family had been informed.
Police have asked for witnesses to get in touch. The city had been busy after Wales beat England in a Six Nations clash at the Principality Stadium.
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He is China's number one dissident, described in the press here as a criminal, for others a hero of Chinese democracy. Either way, Liu Xiaobo's collapsing body is at the heart of a struggle to control the message over the meaning of his fast approaching death. | By Stephen McDonellBBC News, Beijing
China's dying Nobel Peace Prize winner is at the centre of an information war.
The country's state-run media say Liu Xiaobo's cancer "mustn't be politicised" as they publish leaked recordings of him under surveillance while in jail and now in hospital.
International human rights groups say they are dismayed he is still being held under guard to the very end and the German government says China's security forces are running the treatment of this terminally ill patient rather than doctors.
The truth is that the Chinese government knows this all looks bad.
Not since Nazi Germany has a Nobel Peace Prize winner died while in custody and that is exactly what is unfolding here.
Bedside show
Following a diagnosis of terminal, late-stage liver cancer, Chinese officials moved him from prison to hospital to see out his remaining days under guard but with better medical care.
Nobody is doubting the genuine effort of the Chinese doctors who have tried to help Liu Xiaobo nor their professional capability.
But the German government says they are not running the show around Liu Xiaobo's bed at Shenyang's First Hospital of China Medical University. That has been the job of China's state security forces.
And it has been a show.
According to a statement from the German Embassy, when one of the country's doctors came to help, audio and video surveillance of this meeting was recorded despite prior written German requests that no such recordings be made.
Then this material was selectively leaked to Chinese state media in order to get out the message that his treatment had been humane.
Eleven years
Liu Xiaobo has been held since soon after the Beijing Olympics in 2008.
He was given an eleven-year jail term for "inciting subversion of state power" after he and others co-authored a manifesto called "Charter '08" advocating a sweeping democratic overhaul of China's system of government.
One of the most risky things you could possibly do in China is promote any form of organising around the overthrow of Communist Party monopoly power.
While in custody in 2010 he won the Nobel Peace Prize which was awarded to an empty chair in his absence.
Who is Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo?
The love that survived a Chinese labour camp
In recent times Liu Xiaobo's health has been deteriorating. Since his cancer diagnosis, Western governments and human rights groups have called for him to be allowed to go overseas for better treatment.
Chinese officials have responded that he is too unwell to travel yet two foreign doctors, after visiting the hospital, contradicted this diagnosis.
As a compromise, China has allowed two international specialists to come and see him in Shenyang.
Foreign offers
After their initial visit, Dr Joseph Herman from the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and Dr Markus Büchler, chairman of Heidelberg University's Surgery Department, released a statement:
"Liu Xiaobo and his family have requested that the remainder of his care be provided in Germany or the United States.
"While a degree of risk always exists in the movement of any patient, both physicians believe Mr. Liu can be safely transported with appropriate medical evacuation care and support.
"However, the medical evacuation would have to take place as quickly as possible. The University of Heidelberg and MD Anderson have each agreed to accept Mr. Liu for treatment."
The Chinese government has not agreed to allow this to happen.
Instead it has been releasing footage of Liu Xiaobo appearing to say on camera that Chinese doctors have treated him well and that some of his symptoms pre-date his incarceration.
The clip of surveillance footage with the foreign team of doctors achieves the same effect.
Standard gagging procedure
Liu Xiaobo is shown lying in bed with a small crowd of medical staff and others around him.
Dr Büchler is seen speaking to Liu Xiaobo's wife, Liu Xia, who is standing at the bottom of his bed with her back to the camera.
"It's very, very good that the doctors from China have asked us to come and help," he says in English. "So they are very committed to the treatment of your husband. They want us to help and I think this is a very nice gesture."
Liu Xia does not reply and must appear distressed because the American doctor says "Are you OK?" as he reaches out to comfort her.
When asked about requests that China's most influential dissident be allowed to travel overseas for medical help the response from the Chinese government has been that this is an internal matter for this country and that others should simply mind their own business.
At the regular foreign ministry press briefing on Monday, eight of the 17 questions to the spokesperson were about Liu Xiaobo but, when the official transcript of the press conference appeared on the ministry's website, all questions relating to Liu had been removed.
This is standard procedure for the authorities here when it comes to sensitive subjects. Promote your own line (foreign doctors praising their Chinese counterparts), and shut down all discussion which contradicts it (foreign doctors saying he can travel overseas or German government saying surgeons not in charge of his care).
The unknown Nobel
As an exercise I have been asking "ordinary" Chinese people in recent days about Liu Xiaobo.
My questions were met with a blank expression - er, who?
People do not even seem to know that China has had a Nobel Peace Prize winner.
When Western journalists visited the hospital in Shenyang and asked the nurses on duty where Liu Xiaobo was, they not only could not find his name on the database but appeared to have never heard of him, along the lines of "Sorry could you spell that name again? Why have so many people have been asking about this man? Who is he?"
For the Chinese government this represents mission accomplished.
As for the country's reputation overseas they will just plan to ride this one out like they have with other unpleasant subjects.
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Arrested opposition presidential candidate retired general Sarath Fonseka’s wife Anoma Fonseka called the opposition to unite
in an inauguration of a new political front to fight the forthcoming elections. |
In her first direct political act since the arrest of her husband, Anoma Fonseka said that she is representing the wishes
of her husband.
"There is a kind of one family rule in the country. We have to unite to fight against that." She said while addressing the
media in Colombo on Monday.
She said her husband will continue to fight against corruption and injustice.
General Fonseka’s wife was speaking at the launch of new political front, Democratic People's Alliance.
“People who keep my husband in custody are cowards”. She added.
I wish the parties who left us will come back to fight in a common front
We have a right to fight against the rulers who treat this country as their personal property.
The spokesman for the Democratic People’s Alliance, former MP Vijitha Herath said that they are still ready to accommodate
the United National Party (UNP).
“We invite the UNP to come and join us to fight the election under a common symbol. They should think beyond their own party
symbol in this time of need.” Said the former MP of the JVP.
UNP
However, the UNP said that they are not ready to give up the elephant symbol. The general secretary of the party, Tissa Attanayake
said that the UNP will contest the elections with the rest of the alliance.
“All efforts to unite had failed so far. We were ready to fight the elections under a common symbol in certain districts but
we could not reach an agreement.
TNA split
Meanwhile two former MPs of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) announced on Monday that they are forming a new party to contest
the forthcoming elections.
M.K. Sivajilingam and N. Srikantha declared that they had decided to leave the TNA and form a new party, Tamil Peoples Liberation
Organisation
They said that the TNA had failed to deliver the aspirations of the Tamils in the country.
“TNA is controlled by three forces. They are the former MPs: R. Sambanthan, Suresh Premachandran and M Senadirajah, they act
according to the wishes of the Indian government”. Accused the breakaway group.
MK Sivajilingam said the TNA leadership is responsible for the death of thousands of Tamils killed in the last pace of the
war.
The new party will be contesting the elections in an alliance with the Left Front
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The chief executive of Lancashire County Council has been suspended pending the outcome of a disciplinary investigation. | The county council's Urgency Committee decided to suspend Phil Halsall in a meeting at County Hall.
It follows an independent review of the tender process for a contract to run the council's fleet services.
Jo Turton, the council's executive director for environment, has been appointed interim chief executive.
Mr Halsall was chief executive at South Ribble Council before leaving to become executive director of resources in 2000 at Liverpool City Council.
He joined Lancashire County Council in 2009 and was appointed chief executive in November 2010.
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The last time I met a Blackberry boss it ended rather badly. Eighteen months ago Mike Lazaridis, then co-CEO of RIM, took exception to a question and terminated our encounter . So I was very grateful that Thorsten Heins, now in sole charge, agreed to meet me this week and give me so much of his time. | Rory Cellan-JonesTechnology correspondent@BBCRoryCJon Twitter
He took over in January, after Mr Lazaridis and his co-CEO Jim Balsillie stepped down, battered by the crisis at the Blackberry company which probably explained the tensions of our interview the previous spring.
With its share of the smartphone market heading south and investors agitated about the precipitous fall in the share price, Mr Heins faced an unenviable challenge. When I asked him how much progress he made, he took me through a list of management changes and restructuring initiatives.
But he knows his real challenge is to turn around perceptions of Blackberry.
Last week the New York Times ran a feature which could hardly have been more damaging, suggesting that Blackberry owners were now ashamed of their devices. In the city where every Wall Street banker and hotshot lawyer once flaunted this symbol of their need to be connected to their email 24/7, this was hurtful stuff.
When I brought up the article, Mr Heins insisted it was poorly researched and far from the truth: "80 million users that are loyal is a different testament."
But as if to highlight the huge problem that Blackberry has in the United States, he went on: "What I see in my markets outside the US is huge growth, huge commitment to Blackberry."
But there appears to be no growth and no commitment in the US - indeed, figures show that RIM's smartphone market share keeps on falling, down another 3% between May and August this year.
Blackberry is still a very respected brand across the developing world - but it is undeniable that it has lost its cachet in the US and Europe. Turning that around and pulling the company out of its death spiral all depends on a new operating system, Blackberry 10.
Mr Heins gave me a demo, telling me that this was a "whole new paradigm" in mobile operating systems. Unlike the pattern set by Apple's first iPhone, where a user has to continually go in and out of a menu of apps, Blackberry 10's trick is something called Flow. This enables you to move seamlessly between a whole range of apps, heading from an email to your calendar to a social network without returning to a home screen.
The key difference, though, is that RIM has finally surrendered fully to the touchscreen experience, having insisted for years that a physical keyboard was integral to its appeal. There will still be devices with keys to tap but Mr Heins indicated that the buttonless Blackberry was the future.
The CEO and his executive team have been travelling the globe spreading the gospel of Blackberry 10 to developers - who will provide the apps on which its appeal depends - and the mobile operators who will sell it to consumers. He said there had been plenty of support.
But here's the rub - the new system won't be available until the first quarter of next year, and that may be too late. With every passing week, more consumers choose Android or Apple phones, and even more crucially, more corporations switch away from Blackberry. The management consultants Booz Allen and US Customs are amongst the recent deserters. Winning them back will be a lot harder than losing them.
But Mr Heins remained resolutely cheery. "Quality matters," he insisted when I suggested RIM had already missed the boat. "We're not just building an update of Blackberry 7, we're building a whole new mobile computing platform. Don't underestimate the dynamic that this platform is going to create in the market." And he made this bold claim: "In the US we are going to regain our market share with Blackberry 10."
With Android and Apple now grabbing most of that market, the road back looks hard - and that is if you ignore the much better-funded Windows Phone platform. I know plenty of people who are anything but ashamed to own a Blackberry - as I left my office to interview Mr Heins, a colleague told me to tell him he couldn't live without his.
But a brand that has been left behind in a fast-changing world has only a short time to turn things around.
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An iron and steel company with plants in County Durham, Cumbria and Lincolnshire has gone into administration. | The Bondshold Group employs 219 staff in Crook, Alston and Scunthorpe.
The firm, established in 1868, was rated one of the UK's fastest-growing for international sales in 2017.
Joint administrator Clare Boardman said the company was "long established so we remain hopeful that a buyer can still be found".
Discussions with "interested parties" were taking place during the Christmas shut-down, she said.
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An estimated one in four pregnancies ends in miscarriage - although there are no official statistics and the true figure could be lower or even higher. Many couples will never reveal they have had a miscarriage, but here, three women and one man describe the shock, guilt and distress they felt after losing their babies. | By Caroline LowbridgeBBC News
When Emily Daft described being left heartbroken by a miscarriage and her treatment by the hospital it prompted many other women to share their own experiences.
Mrs Daft started bleeding but was told she could not be seen by the hospital that day, and the miscarriage was only confirmed by a scan at a private IVF clinic. She later passed her baby "in agony" at home.
Many couples suffer "silent grief" after losing their babies, according to Ruth Bender Atik, national director of the Miscarriage Association.
"It's the loss of a baby however early in the pregnancy it was, and they sometimes carry that around with them, either because they are embarrassed or because they feel like they must have done something to cause it," she says.
Partly because of this silence, Ms Bender Atik believes many couples do not realise how likely miscarriage is.
"When you start learning about biology and pregnancy - you may learn for example about how not to get pregnant - there's not often much talked about what happens when pregnancies go wrong," she says.
"Few people know how common it is and most people are really shocked if it happens to them, really, really shocked."
However, people cope with miscarriage differently.
"For some people miscarriage is absolutely devastating, and for some people at the other extreme miscarriage is just a blip in their pregnancy history and they move on," says Ms Bender Atik.
"But it also has to be said there are some people for whom miscarriage might be a relief if this is a pregnancy they really didn't want and they were thinking of terminating."
Here, one woman describes the devastation of her first miscarriage, another explains how a miscarriage contributed to the breakdown of her marriage, and a couple explain how talking openly has helped them both.
'I thought it might come back alive'
"Some people say it's not really a baby if it's not fully grown but it is. It is still a child. It still had a heartbeat. It was still inside me growing."
Jackie Fretwell was 18 years old when she had her first of seven miscarriages in 1999.
When she became pregnant Jackie did not consider the possibility of losing her baby. Nobody talked about miscarriage back then, she says.
Even when she started bleeding from her vagina Jackie did not think she might be having a miscarriage. Even when she had a scan, and was told her baby had no heartbeat, Jackie refused the offer of surgery to remove it.
"Even though I was 10 weeks pregnant its heart had stopped at nine," she says.
"They offered to remove the baby. I think I actually thought it might come back alive and I said 'No, not yet'."
Jackie left the hospital and went home with her baby still inside her. It would have been her first child and she was utterly devastated to lose it.
"I had already chosen my pushchair and my Moses basket. I had gone overboard because I had never thought about miscarriage ever," she says.
"Your world falls apart right there and then. Things go through your head, like you are worthless, you can't do anything, you can't even carry children."
Jackie says she received no support from the health system because she was "just classed as miscarrying a foetus", but she found that talking to family and friends helped her get through it.
"It took a lot because I was a mess. I would cry and cry," she says. "You think that there might be something wrong with you as a person."
Jackie became pregnant again and had a daughter, now 17, and despite having a further six miscarriages she has given birth to a further four healthy children.
She now makes a conscious effort to talk more openly about miscarriage, and she no longer blames herself.
"I think you get stronger and you just want to be there for people because then some of my friends went through miscarriages," she says.
"I knew what they were feeling so I could relate to them and speak to them about it. And it helps, it helps to talk."
Miscarriage: The loss of about one in four pregnancies
Source: Miscarriage Association
'I just felt like it was my fault'
Laura Bellamy says she still does not know how her ex-husband feels about the loss of their baby. They separated two years later, in March 2015, and she feels the miscarriage contributed to this.
"We didn't talk about it at all," she says. "It felt like I had done something wrong - I ate something, I lifted something heavy I shouldn't have. I just felt like it was my fault, that I lost our baby.
"I know he cried because he came home and did have a cry and then as he said he 'manned up and got on with stuff'."
The couple already had a son together, now aged 11, but had been trying for another child for at least two years.
"It just felt like I couldn't carry another child for him," Laura says. "It got to the point where I couldn't stand him in the room. I couldn't stand him touching me or anything.
"It was like a delayed reaction to what happened."
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Research has suggested that the standard of care for mothers experiencing the end of a pregnancy varies widely, and academics have called for a "standardised approach".
Laura feels her miscarriage was more distressing because of how she was treated by the hospital.
"I was stuck in A&E for eight hours while I was heavily bleeding and all they gave me was two paracetamols for the pain," she says.
She was six to seven weeks pregnant at that point. The hospital did a test which indicated she was still pregnant, so she was sent home to rest.
"Two days after I went home I went to the toilet and that's when I miscarried because it landed in the toilet and like the silly girl that I was I scooped it up and put it in a box," she says.
"My friend took me back to the hospital and they said it was a blood clot, but I knew in my mind that was my baby."
She returned to the hospital again the following day for a scan, but the woman who called her name was heavily pregnant.
"I didn't think that was right at all," she says. "I stood there and said I wanted somebody else to scan me, and they got somebody else to scan me, and that's when they told me I had miscarried."
Before her miscarriage, Laura did not know how common they are.
"I would have been able to talk to people if I'd known what other people had gone through," she says.
"I felt very sad, I had a couple of weeks off work. I had a son to look after so I just put it in the back of my mind and got on with things and cried privately.
"I didn't go to any support groups or anything, I just carried on."
'This is a possibility, not a pregnancy'
Phill Johnson should have been celebrating his birthday when his wife Alice was lying in a hospital bed, having lost their baby and almost bled to death.
He found the experience in December so "horrific" he does not want Alice to tell him if she becomes pregnant again.
"Personally it kind of tore me apart inside but you can't show your missus that because you've got to be strong for her."
"I don't want to know until she's at least four months," says Phill. "I don't want to get excited about having a new baby and then something like that happens. I can't deal with that again."
Alice's experience was particularly difficult because she had to make her own way to hospital by tram, after being told she could not get an ambulance.
"The tram was covered in blood," says Alice. "I had got members of the public trying to keep their eyes down trying to avert their attention.
"It was incredibly embarrassing. The pain was nothing in comparison. It felt like my dignity had been torn away from me.
"It was the blood and where it was coming from. It's just undignified. Childbirth isn't the most dignified thing in the world, but I wasn't having a child, I was losing one."
Alice had lost five pints of blood by the time she got to hospital, due to a tear in her womb, but despite the huge physical trauma she has coped surprisingly well emotionally.
She attributes this to already having known about the risk of miscarriage.
"My sister has been through miscarriage a few times," she says.
"So as soon as I had that little bit of bleeding I knew there was something going wrong. Then when it completely burst I knew that was it. There was no chance that a child was surviving that."
She believes miscarriage would be "less devastating" for younger women in particular if they were aware of how common it is.
"They would be less anxious about their pregnancy knowing that you've got to think of it as 'this is a possibility, not a pregnancy'," she says.
Phill has talked to "maybe one friend" about the miscarriage.
"Men should be able to talk about these sort of things but society has kind of groomed you not to," he says.
"I've seen young men where the loss of a child has made them lose the plot. It sends them mad upstairs, they become disconnected from friends, from family, from their girlfriend, wife.
"Men shut down and it's not a good thing for a man to shut down because it's very difficult for a man to open up again.
"A loss of a child is obviously a horrible thing to feel, but men don't talk about this sort of thing and it drives you crazy in your head, simply because you have to be tough, you can't show emotion."
He also believes it's crucial for couples to support each other through it.
"Families break up because of this and it shouldn't be like that at all," he says.
"She becomes depressed because the closest person to her would have been her husband and he probably doesn't talk. He probably shut down, switched off, didn't want to talk about it because it's too painful. But you can't do that.
"You have to talk about these things, no matter how much it hurts. Cry on each other's shoulders. Hug each other until you fall asleep. Both of you have got to remain and stick with each other and keep that close bond with one another, otherwise you will drift apart."
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A small fire involving low-level waste was extinguished by firefighters at the Dounreay experimental nuclear power site, an environment watchdog has said. | Wednesday's incident was dealt with by the Caithness site's fire crew.
The Scottish Environment Protection Agency said the fire had broken out within Dounreay's equipment maintenance and decontamination facility.
It said that at this stage there was no evidence of contamination being released into the environment.
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Germany has been celebrating the 20th anniversary of its reunification. | Chancellor Angela Merkel led the official celebrations, hosted by the northern city of Bremen and attended by tens of thousands of people.
Capitalist West and communist East Germany merged on 3 October 1990, nearly a year after the fall of the Berlin Wall which divided them.
Sunday is also the day Germany makes the last payment on debt stemming from reparations imposed after World War I.
'Solidarity tax'
Mrs Merkel was joined by many leading German and international figures in Bremen to mark one of the 20th Century's historical turning points.
German President Christian Wulff told the assembled dignitaries: "We remember the momentous day that a people experience only rarely. I bow before everyone who fought for freedom... your courage moved the world."
He called for a "new solidarity" that encompassed Christianity, Judaism and Islam.
"We must not allow the cementing of prejudice and exclusion," he said.
On the eve of the anniversary, US President Barack Obama passed on his congratulations and said Germany was "one of our closest allies and greatest friends".
He said the US honoured "the courage and conviction of the German people that brought down the Berlin Wall, ending decades of painful and artificial separation".
Mrs Merkel, who was brought up in the East, praised former East Germans for fighting for their freedom.
She added: "At the same time, there was a huge wave of solidarity from the people in West Germany. It is thanks to these joint efforts that we have been able to rebuild so quickly and make Germany a country that is respected in the world."
Since the two countries became one, more than 1.5 million people have migrated west.
The BBC's Stephen Evans in Berlin says opinion polls show some unhappiness in the west about the so-called "solidarity tax" on incomes to pay for eastern reconstruction but on both sides of the country the polls indicate a big majority in favour of a united Germany.
However, not everyone welcomed the reunification festivities.
Thousands of police were deployed in Bremen on Saturday as some 1,800 mainly left-wing activists marched through the city in protest. The demonstration passed off peacefully.
Sunday also marks the final day of German reparations for World War I.
A last payment of 70 million euros (£60m) will draw the debt to a close.
In 1919, the victorious allies wanted to ensure Germany would not be capable of war for many years and set reparations at the equivalent of 100,000 tonnes of gold.
But the plan backfired, with modern-day historians claiming the decision was a key factor in the lead-up to World War II.
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A 33-year-old man has been charged with fraudulently obtaining money meant for Grenfell Tower survivors and bereaved families. | Antonio Gouveia is charged with two counts of fraud by false representation and will appear in court later.
It is claimed he is neither a survivor of the tragedy nor someone left bereaved by the tragedy.
The fire in the tower block in North Kensington in west London, in June 2017, claimed the lives of 72 people.
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A crowdfunding site in India has raised more than 1.6 million rupees ($24,976; £17,680) for a four-year-old girl who was critically injured after a drunk man fell on her from a three-storey building. | The girl, Dhanyashri Sridhar, is still recovering in hospital.
The fund, only a week old, has received money from more than a thousand people.
It was launched by a group of young men who live in the same neighbourhood as the Sridhars in Chennai city.
"It feels good to know she is recovering," said Sathish Kumar Mohan, one of the men who helped launch the crowdfunding campaign.
Mr Mohan, a 30-year-old software engineer, told the BBC that he and his friends found out about the accident through a group on WhatsApp.
The group has about 20 participants, all of whom live in the neighbourhood of Old Washermanpet. One of the members messaged on 30 January, saying a little girl had been badly injured and her family needed help.
Mr Mohan said this was not unusual because they had collected money or mobilised help in the past by spreading messages through WhatsApp groups.
Messages on WhatsApp, especially on groups, travel quickly in India where the messaging platform has more than 200 million monthly active users.
But this time, Mr Mohan said, they needed a lot more money. Dhanyashri had fractures in her spine and her legs, and she also needed surgery.
That's when some of Mr Mohan's friends suggested creating an online campaign that would crowdsource funds. "They told me, it will help you reach out to many more people," he said.
Mr Mohan first contacted the girl's father, A Sridhar, over the phone. Then he met him personally to explain that they were raising money to help Dhanyashri.
Mr Sridhar told the BBC that he hopes his daughter will recover soon. He added that he wanted to thank everyone for the money they have contributed.
The campaign was launched on 31 January with photos of Dhanyashri and details of what happened.
It's done "exceptionally well" considering it only launched on January 31, Arti Rajan, the communication officer for the crowdfunding platform, told BBC.
She said the donations varied from $1.56 to $780. Now, the fund is just $6,000 short of its target: $31, 200. It has 24 days left to reach the goal.
He is still in touch with Dhanyashri's father, Mr Sridhar.
"I spoke to him last night and he told me she woke up and recognised her sister," Mr Mohan said. "He said she is eating again and they gave her some dosa with milk."
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| By Andy McFarlaneBBC News
Rubbish criminals
Fly-tipping might not sound like the stuff of master criminals but one Environment Agency manager is calling the problem "the new narcotics". Gangs posing as legitimate waste disposal businesses are using lock-cutters to break into private land and even hiring buildings to dump clients' waste, an investigation reveals. Large-scale tipping - quantified as a dumper-truck load or bigger - has more than doubled in six years. And councils in England spent £12.8m clearing more than 36,200 large tips last year.
For the National Farmers Union, it's a "nightmare". Countryside Alliance head of policy Sarah Lee says tougher sentences are needed, while Keep Britain Tidy argues local authorities must be better resourced to deal with it. "Networks of career criminals" are involved, according to the government, which says the rise could partly be down to better recording. However, Country, Land and Business Association boss Sarah Hendry, says the introduction of fees at many recycling centres has contributed to the problem.
Deadliest day
China has suffered its deadliest day at the hands of the coronavirus outbreak, with 242 deaths in the province of Hubei on Wednesday. It pushes the national death toll above 1,350, with almost 60,000 infections in total. Hubei - home to the city of Wuhan, where the outbreak began - is now using a broader definition to diagnose people, which partly accounts for the steep rise.
Meanwhile, in the UK, all 83 people who have spent a fortnight quarantined at Arrowe Park Hospital on the Wirral will be allowed to leave later, having been told their final tests have come back negative. It comes after the UK recorded its ninth case. Health correspondent Nick Triggle examines Britain's race to contain the virus.
Get news from the BBC in your inbox, each weekday morning
Cabinet reshuffle
Defence Secretary Ben Wallace is hopeful, Health Secretary Matt Hancock is joking about "longevity" and a philosophical Attorney General Geoffrey Cox suggests "other doorways... will open". But, with Boris Johnson set to reshuffle his top team, one cabinet minister tells the BBC's Vicki Young they are "all paranoid, but desperately pretending not to be". With an eye on gender balance, the prime minister is expected to promote several women, including Anne-Marie Trevelyan, Suella Braverman and Gillian Keegan. Meanwhile, Michael Gove is being touted for a role overseeing Brexit trade talks.
Why an ancient German city was destroyed in 1945
By Toby Luckhurst, BBC 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 bombing has become one of the most controversial Allied acts of World War Two. 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.
Read the full article
What the papers say
The coronavirus outbreak leads several papers. After confirmation of a case in London, the Guardian quotes one disease expert saying it could spread quickly via the Tube. The i and Times lead on suggestions ministers are delaying plans to fine social media giants who fail to protect users from harmful content in the face of a "backlash" from tech giants. Others report the prime minister's expected reshuffle, while the Daily Mirror says NHS doctors face bullying and mistreatment, and are quitting "in droves", as they struggle to cope in hospitals stretched by funding cuts. Read the review.
Daily digest
Big Ben Cost of repairing bell tower rises by £18.6m
Chocolate Nestle axes low sugar range due to weak sales
Boris Johnson Businessman "pays £15,000 towards PM's holiday"
Retailers "Help us or you'll kill the High Street"
If you see one thing today
'You can do sassy dancing in a wheelchair'
If you listen to one thing today
Gagged by my uni
If you read one thing today
'I could have been a K-pop idol - but I'm glad I quit'
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Lookahead
09:30 The NHS in England publishes its latest statistics on measures including ambulance response times, casualty department performance and waiting lists for operations.
09:30 Labour Party leadership contenders take part in a debate on the Victoria Derbyshire programme, on BBC Two and the BBC News Channel.
On this day
1996 Boy band Take That announce they are splitting up. Watch Newsround's report from the press conference.
From elsewhere
How Ofcom regulating Facebook and Instagram could work and what could go wrong (Mirror)
Rory Stewart, there's no need to 'kip on my sofa' - I can tell you these things about life in London for free (Telegraph)
Stupid Cupid: Valentine's Day disasters, as seen by waiters (Guardian)
Line Of Duty cast get to work on Series 6 - here's everything we can tell you about it (HuffPost UK)
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The Paris airport of Le Bourget was once a pretty glamorous place. It was here that aviation pioneer Charles Lindbergh landed after his solo flight across the Atlantic in 1927, and it was a gateway to the French capital for Hollywood legends such as Audrey Hepburn for many years. | By Theo LeggettBusiness correspondent, BBC News
Those days are long gone.
Surrounded by drab suburbs and urban motorways it now caters mainly for private jets, whose passengers spend as little time as possible amid its rather bleak and windswept surroundings - although it does have a rather good aviation museum.
But for the next week Le Bourget will become the beating heart of the global aerospace industry.
Scores of politicians - including newly elected President Macron - generals and chief executives will be among the hundreds of thousands of visitors, braving horrendous traffic and negotiating tight security to attend the 52nd Paris Air Show.
So what will be the main talking points in the plush chalets and teeming exhibition halls this year?
Traditionally, the headlines are dominated by big order announcements from home favourite Airbus and the US aerospace giant Boeing, but the market is far less frothy than it used to be.
Global aircraft orders have declined by about half since their peak in 2014. Low oil prices mean that airlines are under less pressure to replace old aircraft with newer, more efficient models.
So we may see fewer announcements.
That isn't a huge problem in itself - both manufacturers already have bulging order books, and both have struggled with supply chain problems, causing delays on the production line. So a reduction in demand may be no bad thing.
However that doesn't apply across the board. The giant A380 superjumbo is the flagship of the Airbus fleet - and its appearance is usually a highlight of the air display. But it isn't selling well and last year the company halved its annual production.
It would doubtless love to announce further orders in Paris but that seems very unlikely. In fact, some are questioning whether the aircraft has a future at all.
In the circumstances, Airbus could well find itself upstaged by its American rival. Boeing is expected to set out details of a planned new mid-sized aircraft, a super-efficient model which will sit between the largest 737 and the smallest 787 in its range.
Meanwhile the latest in a series of heavily upgraded 737 models - the Max 10 - is likely to be formally launched at the show.
Yet the two established giants could be forgiven for looking nervously over their shoulders.
China's Comac and Russia's Irkut have both begun testing new airliners over the past few weeks. Neither the C-919 nor the MC-21 will be at the show - but they will certainly be talked about. The market for smaller jets is about to become a lot more crowded.
While most of the actual business at Le Bourget is done in the chalets and exhibition halls, the flying display allows companies to show off their latest multi-billion dollar technology.
Among the highlights this year will be the F-35 Lightning II, also known as the Joint Strike Fighter.
It is the product of the world's most expensive defence programme, an international effort led by the US contractor Lockheed Martin - and one which has been beset by delays and cost overruns. It badly needs some good PR, so it can be expected to put on a spectacular show.
Elsewhere, much of the talk will focus on new technology.
Outwardly, aircraft may have changed little over the past few decades. But the way in which they are designed, built, maintained and operated has been transformed. That trend is likely to accelerate.
Many of the exhibitors will be showing how virtual reality, augmented reality and 3D printing are already having a major impact on different parts of the industry - and suggesting how their potential could be exploited even further.
For some the future lies in Big Data; analysing huge reams of information to detect patterns, create models and to predict future performance.
"The amount of data this industry generates is massive and growing," says John Schmidt, managing director of Accenture's aerospace and defence business.
"A single flight by a Boeing 787 generates enough data to fill about 200 DVDs", he says. "But very little of that data is actually used."
Big data, he thinks, can transform the way aerospace companies operate.
The organisers of the show, Gifas, are also keen to show off their futuristic credentials. For that reason, they have set up an "Air Lab" dedicated to new technology and ideas, from both established companies and start-ups.
With a rather nice touch, they've put it inside Le Bourget's Concorde Hall - an area dominated by two models of the supersonic airliner that was once ahead of its time, is now obsolete, but still manages to look outrageously futuristic.
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As the deadline looms for submissions to a review of Britain's future aviation policy, does a wartime wreck still packed with explosives prove the biggest threat to those wanting to build a super-airport in the Thames Estuary? | By Peter SherlockBBC News
Three masts visible above the waterline signal its menacing presence - a shipwreck packed with wartime bombs resting on a sandbank in a busy shipping route.
The SS Richard Montgomery, a cargo ship built in Florida to carry vital supplies for the war effort, was anchored in Sheerness, Kent, when it grounded and broke up in 1944.
For almost 70 years it has rested on a sandbank with 1,400 tonnes of explosives on board, monitored 24-hours a day by port authorities and protected by a 500m (1640ft) exclusion zone.
Successive governments have wrestled with the problem of what to do with the wreck, which lies in 50ft (15m) of shallow water about 1.2 miles (2km) off the coast.
Floating airport
But the question of its safety has been brought in to sharp relief by the debate over the future of Britain's aviation policy - and the possible construction, about 1.5 miles (2.4km) away, of an airport handling almost triple the number of passengers as Heathrow.
The Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) insists the wreck is being safely managed and the chance of an explosion is remote, but others have concerns that further deterioration, a collision with another vessel, or a terrorist attack could detonate its cargo.
A commission chaired by ex-Financial Services Authority (FSA) boss Sir Howard Davies is to consider a number of options to expand airport capacity in the South East and report back in 2015.
There have been three different plans put forward recently to build airports in the Thames Estuary, including a floating airport designed by architects Gensler.
Another plan is known as Boris Island after it was backed by the London mayor, and there are proposals for a hub airport on the Isle of Grain, designed by architect Sir Norman Foster.
Other ideas include the expansion of Gatwick, Heathrow or Stansted.
Sir Norman's blueprint for a £50bn four-runway airport on the Isle of Grain - at the easternmost point of the Hoo peninsula - has been variously described as bold, visionary and "absolutely nuts".
One of the most influential of modern architects, Sir Norman designed the terminal building at Stansted Airport, as well as Chek Lap Kok in Hong Kong, one of the world's largest airports.
Now he wants to take his expertise to the Thames Estuary with plans for four runways and the capability to handle 150 million passengers a year. Britain's largest airport, Heathrow, handles 60 million.
Sceptics point out that air traffic would approach from the north-east over the water - close to the Montgomery's resting place. The question asked by some is who would risk building the world's largest airport near a ticking time-bomb under the waves?
Kielce explosion
Currently, the wreck is managed and monitored by the coastguard agency on behalf of the Department for Transport (DfT).
It is one of only two vessels in UK waters designated as dangerous under section two of the Protection of Wrecks Act 1973. The other, the SS Castilian, which sank off Anglesey, Wales, in 1943, is also closely monitored.
It was carrying munitions to Lisbon, Portugal, when it struck East Platters Rocks and sank.
The coastguard agency uses sonar equipment to carry out annual surveys of the Montgomery, and monitors its exclusion zone 24 hours a day.
Following a structural survey in 2009, the MCA found that although the hull appeared to be "reasonably stable", a crack in one of the vessel's holds was "of concern".
The latest survey reported: "The majority of the wreck's structure appears to be stable. Little sign of deterioration since 2009 was evident and only small changes were noted in the wreck's structure and the surrounding seabed."
The agency believes the risk of moving the wreck, or attempting to remove the cargo, would increase the likelihood of an explosion.
It has pursued a policy of non-interference since a botched attempt to remove the munitions from a Polish ship that sank in 1944.
In 1967, the Folkestone Salvage Company was attempting to clear the Kielce when a large explosion ripped through the vessel.
The seismic effects of the blast were recorded about 5,000 miles (8,000km) away. In Folkestone, slates were dislodged and windows smashed, but there were no injuries.
Receiver of wreck Alison Kentuck said it was the general consensus that the munitions were "stable if left undisturbed".
Though the management of the wreck was under "constant review", the current strategy was considered "the best and safest", she added.
Others disagree. Local historian Colin Harvey's film about the wreck - A Disaster Waiting to Happen - is occasionally screened to residents on the Isle of Sheppey.
He fears its cluster bombs could fall through the corroding upper deck and detonate the munitions below, leading to a blast that would "level buildings, burst eardrums and shatter windows".
Mr Harvey said the blast could cause a tidal wave, flooding parts of the Isle of Sheppey, the Isle of Grain, perhaps even Canvey Island and Southend.
In August 2004, a report in the New Scientist magazine said if the ship exploded it would be one of the biggest non-nuclear blasts ever seen and devastate the port of Sheerness, causing up to £1bn of damage.
Mr Harvey added: "The population has lived with the wreck all these years and now (the problem) is brought into focus because of the airport.
"The thinking is that if they build the airport then maybe they will deal with the wreck. It's going to have to be dealt with and the sooner the better."
There are also question marks over the safety of the exclusion zone.
One documentary filmmaker, who did not want to be named, told the BBC he was able to film the wreck from a rubber raft anchored to the outer warning buoy of the zone.
"Neither the coastguard or police paid us any attention on the way out, while we were there, or on returning to shore," he said.
Responding to the claims, a spokesman for the MCA said: "If people break the exclusion zone, and they are caught doing so, then they would be taken to task. But if he's not gone into the exclusion zone, then he's not done anything wrong."
But what can be done to remove the threat posed by the wreck? According to experts, there are two possible options; carry out a controlled explosion or remove the munitions.
Mark Hoddinot, general manager of the International Salvage Union, said the wreck could be moved if the will and financial muscle were there.
'Unknown territory'
"There are a lot of legacy wrecks, hundreds of them, and the issue with most of them is who is going to pay to have them removed," he said.
"The majority of the cost, if not all, is going to be met by taxpayers because the insurers have long since disappeared.
"The main issue is the ammunition but in this technological age, there would be a way to remove that safely. The work itself does not present any major technological challenges, it would be relatively straightforward."
Mr Hoddinot said ships sunk in the Iran-Iraq war during the 1980s were being safely removed from the Persian Gulf, despite having deteriorating explosives on board.
Ian Biles, managing director of marine surveying company Maritime Services International, said the key question was whether the munitions had degraded to such an extent that they were safe to move.
"There's always been this debate 'why not just blow it up and see what happens' because the water would act as a denting mechanism.
"But I can understand why they have adopted the approach they have to leave it alone. It's unknown territory."
The New Scientist report in 2004 also suggested one option would be to encase the wreck in tonnes of sand, deadening any potential explosion.
A Fosters and Partners spokeswoman said the firm had done a thorough study of the wreck.
"We have talked to bomb disposal experts and other experts about the SS Montgomery and its munitions cargo," she said.
"These studies continue and all possibilities for the future of the ship will be explored."
Last year, a spokesman for Boris Johnson said: "Clearly the wreck of the SS Montgomery would need to be considered however some of Britain's finest engineers have already closely studied the area and concluded it would not prevent construction of an airport."
The Airports Commission will make its final report to the government in the summer of 2015.
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A 15-year-old boy has been stabbed in the leg during an attack in a street. | The victim was taken to hospital after he was found injured in Ratcliffe Road, Loughborough, at about 04:40 BST on Sunday.
The road, as well as Glebe Street and Burder Street, has been cordoned off to allow officers to carry out an examination of the area.
Two men, aged 24 and 29, have been arrested on suspicion of causing grievous bodily harm.
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A map of London that has been 10 years in the making is about to go on show in the latest exhibition at the Royal College of Art. According to the artist behind the work, Fuller, looking at his creation is like trying to "skim-read a magical surrealism book". | By Beth RoseBBC News
Crammed full of life - featuring streets and buildings but also ladies under lampposts, the final resting place of Alan Turing and even planes and drones - London Town is a personal interpretation of the capital, referencing the booming heartbeat of its financial core and the tragedy of the 7 July bombings.
"It's all a bit overwhelming, really," Fuller said, handing London Town over to the RCA. "I'm considered an outsider of the art world."
When the artist - real name Gareth Wood - first put pen to paper in 2005, London was soon to win the Olympic bid, but the high of that victory was immediately punctured by the despair of 7/7.
He said: "Some of the stories in there are highly personal: a girl I knew was unfortunately killed in the London bombings, but it's not something that others wouldn't have experienced."
Before the creative work could begin, Fuller trudged the streets of London seeking inspiration, taking photographs and making videos, and spent hours in libraries poring over maps
"After this intense research I begin drawing," he said.
"Sometimes I'll just go ink to page, but with major landmarks sometimes I'll pencil them first to get an accuracy.
"Certain things are very much where they are plotted but it's not geographically precise.... and there's only so much that can go on to the map.
"You won't find Buckingham Palace on it, but if you look you will see Kensington Palace because there was space for it to go there to reference the royal heritage."
Acquired by the British Library for its contemporary map collection, in terms of cartography London Town is "actually quite accurate", according to the artist.
Tom Harper, curator of antiquarian mapping at the British Library, described the work as "one of the most personal pieces of cartography I've ever seen" and said it would be held alongside works by other contemporary artists including Grayson Perry.
Four highlights of the map, as described by Fuller:
The Aylesbury Estate in Camberwell is Europe's largest social housing development. Its brutalist design has a dramatic effect on visitors but this established community is battling daily with their uncertain future. I spent a short time documenting conversations with locals and photographing estates in south London. These vast housing complexes provoke fond memories from childhood, urban exploring and playing out with friends.
The City is a crucial beating pulse. Its international workforce is connected through hyper-speed trading and from here London's global recognition in finance unfolds daily. It was many years ago that I watched traders on the LIFFE exchange by Cannon Street. Each would wear their own coloured jacket and were quicker than ninjas using signals to make deals. I delivered coffees as a work experience runner. The sheer buzz that belongs to the square mile is unique.
The Cycle Superhighway weaves its way through Docklands above the new Island Development. The notion of raised bike routes seems less conceptual and maybe a necessity as urban planners hit melting point for space and cohesion across the city. The suffragettes symbol proudly pokes out in memory of the work done by Sylvia Pankhurst and activist history in the east of London.
Nestled in west London is the picturesque stretch of Little Venice. Just a little north is the Colonnade Hotel, the birthplace of Alan Turing, the pioneering computer scientist. I've drawn a fictitious tomb inscribed with binary code - the very least I could do.
As well as charting what he sees now, Fuller also thought about the future of the capital, studying its 2020 Vision to see how the city could change.
"I was working with developers like Cathedral Group and they were brilliant in helping me. Then there's Crossrail and Crossrail 2 in the map, which hasn't been started yet, so I try and look into the future.
"There are drones added to the map but it also drifts across time because there are ladies under lampposts in Fulham, because in the 18th Century it was rife for gambling and naughtiness.
"There's so much in there, it's a little like trying to skim-read a magical surrealism book."
As for London Town's worth Fuller claims he has not given much thought to it and has no intention of selling "unless someone wants to make a ridiculous offer". A print of the map costs £3,000.
He said: "I'm hoping to keep hold of all the originals for a solo show in a decade or so, so I can just take them out of boxes and put them on the wall."
Now he has completed his 10-year labour of love, Fuller is looking beyond the UK for his next project.
He said: "There are plans to start drawing a new place in early 2016. It's undecided where exactly, but I have a wish list. I would like to do some of the South American cities in the future. The US would be really interesting, although the most likely at the moment is Barcelona."
Wherever it may be "as an artist I will put my heart and soul into getting under the skin of the city", he says.
"I'm trying to push the boundaries with the craft and hopefully I've done that and personalised it enough - I've put myself out there in a huge life documentary."
London Town is on display in the Flux Exhibition at the Royal College of Art from 11- 14 December.
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European Union leaders are meeting in Brussels and at the top of their agenda is a review of the Brexit negotiations. They are demanding better clarifications from the UK over its financial commitments, and the impasse has led to a lot of talk of a "no deal" Brexit. | We ask journalists covering the summit how their countries view the possibility of no formal agreement between the UK and the EU.
Germany: Daniel Brössler, Süddeutsche Zeitung Brussels correspondent
The German thinking now is that a "no deal" scenario is not what you want - of course it would have an impact on British-German trade. But my impression is that the German government thinks that a bad deal, from the European perspective, would be even worse. They are saying we need a fair deal. But if there is no deal we will survive it, it will be tough but the EU will survive it - and Germany has a lot of trade with the rest of Europe.
So far the talks are not seen in Germany as having broken down - people think there is still time to make a deal, that enough progress might be made in December. But people see that there is a risk. Politicians see responsibility for this on the British side - and Brexit has already estranged us to a certain degree. There is a feeling of them and us, you can see a pretty strict mood in Berlin. People say we need a fair deal, but there is no mood to have a deal just to please the British.
Denmark: Lotte Mejlhede, TV2 News correspondent
I don't think any country in Europe wants a "no deal" result. Business people and politicians in Denmark are very interested in having a good future trade deal with the UK. Denmark has quite a lot of trade with the UK, and we have an issue with the fishing quotas.
Some Eurosceptic politicians want to join the UK outside the EU, but in general the attitude is that we're better off staying in, and that's also because of our size - our population is 5.5 million, and it's quite hard to do big trade deals alone. When the UK leaves, the axis of the EU will be France and Germany.
Now I think everybody is hoping for a deal. But we know businesses are also preparing for the worst-case scenario.
Poland: Maciej Sokolowski, TVN24 News correspondent
People in Poland were just waiting for the announcement on Wednesday by the British Prime Minister [Theresa May] that everyone living in the UK can stay there with the same rights as today. That's the most important thing for Poles living in the UK, the guarantee that they can stay. The change of tone was really important. There were rumours like: "Do we have to go back to Poland?" and "Do we have to leave our jobs now?"
Brexit isn't the main topic now in Poland. Of course there's about a million Polish people in the UK, but Poles are not talking much about the money, or the Ireland issue. On freedom of movement - the UK isn't in the Schengen area, so it shouldn't be much worse after Brexit. But no-one knows now what no deal really means.
We still see the UK as our biggest friend in the EU, with Hungary. So after Brexit it will be a political problem for Poland, being without our main friend in the EU.
Spain: Adolfo Lorente, El Correo correspondent
Ordinary people don't understand what has happened with the UK. The situation is very complicated. We read that the UK is very angry with the EU, that it doesn't want to pay the bill. People don't understand the economic impact, but it's very important for Spain - we export fruit, wine. Many Spanish people go to Britain to learn English or work. Now there is a lot of doubt - people ask "What is happening with Brexit?" and "What about exports and passports?"
It's like the situation with Catalonia - Spanish people feel that they don't want to be with us, they want to be separate. But we think that being together, united, is better. Gibraltar is also a big issue for us. Patriotism in Spain is very high now.
Theresa May's support for Spain over Catalonia in exchange for [Spanish PM] Mariano Rajoy's support over Brexit is a real possibility. Some diplomats here in Brussels smile and say it's possible.
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The Sri Lankan navy has arrested four Indians and two suspected LTTE cadres trying to smuggle a kilogram of heroin into the country. | The men were traveling in a boat from southern India when they were captured near Mannar.
They were produced before the Mannar district judge who remaded them untill 12th of April.
After questioning those in the boat which transported heroin, Nobertsingham from Killinochchi told Navy that he carried them to hand over to Sandanan in Pesalai. Sandanan was later arrested by police.
Police said the two men were allegedly have involved in making identity cards for two LTTE members in an earlier occasion, therefore they suspect them to be members of LTTE.
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A 17-year-old boy has been charged with murder after a man was fatally stabbed at a south London youth club. | Glendon Spence, 23, from Lewisham, was attacked at the Marcus Lipton Youth Centre in Brixton at about 18:45 GMT on 21 February.
He was pronounced dead at the scene in Minet Road less than an hour later.
A boy, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was arrested in Manchester on Wednesday and charged with murder on Thursday.
He will appear at Manchester and Salford Magistrates' Court on Friday.
Another 17-year-old boy was charged with murder on 24 February.
A provisional trial date has been set for 12 August at the Old Bailey.
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Irene Corsaro will never forget her first driving lesson under a rain of black ash from Mount Etna. Like many Sicilians from Catania, the 18-year-old has learnt quickly how to make her way home on a road covered in volcanic dust during one of the volcano's 11 eruptions in the past three weeks. A 12th eruption was under way on Friday. | By Francesca MarcheseCatania, Sicily
Every so often, the volcano's four main craters awake with intense, simultaneous blasts. These episodes create a spectacular natural firework display, replete with bubbles, fountains and flows of lava. Within minutes, neighbouring towns and villages are showered with flakes of ash and other debris.
'Lava falling on my roof'
Irene's trip with her mother through the deserted streets of her home town of Nicolosi, on Etna's slopes, turned into a nightmare when her Peugeot 107 car was stopped by a sound she had never heard before.
"It was like a sudden crackling; like hail pouring down and popping around. I thought it was because of the ash on the street," she said. "Instead, it was fragments of lava (lapilli) falling on both my roof and my windscreen from a giant red cloud right over me."
It was 16 February and the sky was already inflamed by the sunset. It was to be the first in an array of violent episodes on Etna, increasing in power each time. Those paroxysms have since come in the middle of the night, at sunrise, during a storm and even under the light of a full moon.
Irene Corsaro could feel the stones grinding under the car's tyres and she soon realised how lucky she was to be wearing her anti-Covid facemask. "The red-coloured air was very poor, heavy to breathe in." They rushed home to pack in case they needed to evacuate.
Clouds of sulphur dioxide (SO2), visible from space, have reached as far away as China. But the ash and the heavier lapilli stay local. They drape the sides of the volcano and blanket at least 16 towns around Etna's cone. Fornazzo, Giarre and Zafferana are among those affected, and even coastal towns like Riposto and Torre Archirafi.
Etna has released some 40 million cubic metres of volcanic material, says volcanologist Boris Behncke, who monitors Etna closely for the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV).
"It is quite a lot," he tells the BBC. In comparison, the Etna eruption that threatened the town of Randazzo in 1981 released a mere 20 million cubic metres of material.
Watching Etna's destructive power
From my window, 20km (12 miles) south-east of Etna's summit, I have an unbroken view of the volcano. There is something primordial about being indoors as nature unleashes its energy.
It starts with a column of dust that can climb as high as 12km, then lava fountains, pyroclastic flow and even lightning - mainly from the south-east crater, but from the other three as well.
The eruptions may be spectacular, but they are a nuisance too.
Lava dust falls over my head and over my washing line. I have spent much of the past three weeks of curfew sweeping the floor.
My car windscreen is constantly covered by a dark patina of grime, but you must not use water to clear it. This glaze contains sharp glass particles that will scrape it beyond repair. No wonder some people have wrapped up their parked cars in bed-sheets to protect them.
When it rains, the drizzle turns carpets of lava dust into something resembling concrete. It blocks gutters and drainage channels, prompting flooding and water seeping into houses.
Etna's explosions generate "infrasonic waves" that the human ear does not pick up because of their low sound frequency, but the glass in the windows does.
After so many eruptions, you can now tell what Etna is doing simply by listening to the trembling of the windows. It wakes you up with a jolt in the middle of the night. The sound of a column of ash and dust is different, more of a jingle-jangle.
Twelve tonnes of dust
The damage to the area has been immense and the Sicilian region has declared a crisis for 13 towns on Etna and another 30 surrounding the volcano.
Orange groves and other crops have been destroyed and on one occasion the motorway between Fiumefreddo and Giarre was shut to allow dust to be cleared. Motorbikes are banned and the speed limit has been cut to 20km/h.
Schools in Giarre were shut for three days and the weekly market suspended. Locals have been instructed to collect the dust in transparent bags and not to mix it with ordinary rubbish.
"We have to deal with six kilos of volcanic dust in every square metre, with a total of 12 tonnes," Giarre Mayor Angelo D'Anna told the BBC.
"The latest black rain lasted just 30 minutes and generated as much rubbish as we usually have in a year. It'll cost up to €600,000 (£510,000) and we are worried because it is going to happen again and again. How can we pay for it?"
The regional government is to provide €1m and will ask the Rome government for more help, but there is no regional plan to manage the dust. It may be a natural phenomenon, but it is treated as waste and there is not yet anything planned to remove it.
Sweeping balconies of black dust has become a regular event for the thousands who live in the towns around Etna.
Every roof, terrace, porch, veranda and geranium-adorned balustrade has turned black. Even gardens are barely green any more.
How unusual are the eruptions?
Etna is no stranger to these episodes. Despite the extraordinary amount of volcanic material that has erupted, experts agree the volcano is merely repeating previous patterns of behaviour. But they also admit that the power released is greater than before.
"In the past we witnessed two or three strong events, and others that were weaker," says volcanologist Boris Behncke. "Now every paroxysm is strong. Nonetheless, at the moment Etna is deflating, there is no more magma coming and its system is stable."
I have sensed a change too. I have always seen an eruption with a flame that goes on and off like a lighter. This time I have seen at least three tongues of flame with lava fountains on both sides of Etna, and a constant wall of flame.
As long as the activity remains on the summit there is no danger. More eruptions are likely, but not even the experts can predict when.
Related Internet Links
Etna: Italy's INGV
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"I don't see it as an existential problem for the CDU, but I do see it as a problem," Chancellor Angela Merkel admitted as she summed up her centre-right party's poor performance in key regional elections in three German states on Sunday. | By Damien McGuinnessBBC News, Berlin
German politics is suddenly looking a lot less predictable and potentially less stable.
It's all because of the astonishing success of the anti-migrant Alternative for Germany (AfD). Many German voters appear rattled by the large numbers of refugees and migrants arriving in Germany - 1.1 million in 2015 alone.
Politicians are now getting down to the nitty-gritty of coalition-building. But all the cards have been thrown up in the air so it's a question of seeing where they will settle. And it's going to get messy.
Papers say Merkel 'paying price'
Profile: Angela Merkel
AfD leader Frauke Petry
Splintered politics
Each of the three regional premiers should be able to hang on to power.
Popular Green party Premier Winfried Kretschmann, of the south-western state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, has shown that the Greens' success in what used to be a conservative heartland is not just a blip from a 2011 election held in the aftermath of Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster.
Centre-left SPD Premier Malu Dreyer, of Rhineland-Palatinate, confidently saw off the CDU's promising rising star Julia Kloeckner by rather bizarrely doing a better job at imitating Mrs Merkel's centrist stance on refugees than the chancellor's own candidate.
CDU Premier Reiner Haseloff also held on in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, where AfD polled almost a quarter of the vote.
But this is far from a continuation of the status quo. They will have to govern with new, and in some cases untested, coalition partners.
Gone are the days of two major parties, one on the right, one on the left.
German politics has become splintered.
Smaller, more radical parties are gaining influence. And adventurous coalition combinations are now possible, including in Saxony-Anhalt, where a distinctly uncomfortable menage-a-trois between centre-right CDU, centre-left SPD and the left-wing Greens looks like the only feasible option.
The right-wing AfD's tough populist talk has attracted voters angered by the influx of migrants, chipping away at the traditional support base on both the left and the right - conservative voters who are disenchanted with Angela Merkel's pro-refugee approach as well as blue-collar left-wingers who feel nervous that state spending on migrants will undermine their own position in society.
The big question is what this means for Angela Merkel's stance on refugees. Closed borders along the Balkan route have effectively already slammed shut her open door invitation to Syrian refugees.
No credible rivals
But Mrs Merkel's pro-refugee rhetoric has barely changed. She still believes Germany, and indeed the rest of Europe, has a responsibility to shelter people fleeing war. She refuses to contemplate a cap on numbers coming to Germany.
"We need a European solution and this solution needs time," she told journalists in Berlin on Monday afternoon.
So have these elections undermined Chancellor Merkel's leadership? Yes and no.
The gains of the AfD will certainly embolden conservative critics within her own ranks, who accuse her of betraying right-wing values, by dragging her party to the centre-ground.
Awkwardly, many of Mrs Merkel's supporters on the refugee issue are in opposing left-wing parties. Not a great help when it comes to managing her own political bloc.
But Angela Merkel still has no credible rivals within her government and no other party or politician has yet come up with a popular viable solution for the migrant crisis either.
Despite the success of the AfD, this election campaign has shown that her approach still enjoys the support of mainstream society.
It was the candidates, whether on the left or the right, who backed her approach who won out.
In Rhineland-Palatinate for example, voters were treated to the astonishing sight of a TV duel in which the centre-left Malu Dreyer argued with CDU Julia Kloeckner over who was most loyal to Mrs Merkel's position on refugees.
It is not so much Angela Merkel who has been punished by these elections, as her increasingly divided government.
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Plane manufacturer Boeing and an extensive number of aerospace analysts have responded relatively calmly to a cracked cockpit window, an electrical fire possibly caused by faulty batteries, fuel leaks, and brake problems possibly caused by computer problems.
| By Jorn MadslienBusiness reporter, BBC News
All the faults were discovered in one type of aircraft - the hyper-modern 787 Dreamliner - and the incidents, which have all occurred in a matter of weeks, have generally been treated as safety-scares by passengers and the general media.
Industry observers have responded differently, however, with many insisting they have not been surprised by what has happened.
But as the number of worrying occurrences has increased, the chorus of analysts' dismissals - which have generally described them as to-be-expected "teething problems" that are supposedly commonplace whenever an all-new aircraft goes into service - is beginning to sound hollow to many.
Suggestions that each situation has merely uncovered easy-to-fix faults, clearly raises the question why were they not both discovered and fixed before the plane went into commercial service in October 2011?
After all, deliveries of the plane to launch customer All Nippon Airways (ANA) was delayed by three years. Might it not be tempting to expect Boeing's engineers and safety inspectors to have spent their time during those years ensuring the plane was ready to enter service?
"I don't think there's any excuse for these problems any more," Qatar Airways' chief executive Akbar Al Baker told BBC News in a recent interview, ahead of many of the latest scares.
Reputations at risk
Regulators around the world are investigating. Boeing says it is co-operating with the authorities.
Beyond that there is little to be said about that until conclusions are reached.
In the meantime, Boeing's airline customers are left hanging, counting the cost of keeping planes grounded as a result of safety concerns, or to facilitate investigations or time-consuming repairs.
The Japan authorities were the first to ground 787s owned by its airlines. Most of the other relevant authorities have followed suit meaning most of the existing global fleet of the plane is out of service for the time being.
The airlines are also acutely aware of the damage such incidences can cause their reputation, as made clear by ANA's vice-president Osamu Shinobe and executive Hiroyuki Ito's actions as they bowed in shame to apologise to passengers and their family members for causing them concern.
Indeed, in an effort apparently designed to calm concerns, one of Boeing's airline customers - Bjorn Kjos, chief executive of Norwegian Air Shuttle - has come out in defence of the plane, echoing the view that "minor problems" such as these should be expected.
Norwegian has yet to take delivery of the Dreamliner, though the aircraft is vital to its ambitious plan to expand by offering long-haul flights. Japan's two main airlines ANA and JAL also have long-haul plans for their fleet of Dreamliners, which were destined to operate on European and American routes.
Qatar's Mr Baker has long questioned whether the recurring faults are merely "teething problems" and has voiced concerns about how the Dreamliner's delays, and now its faults, have made it difficult for successful airlines to plan ahead and to expand as quickly as they would like to.
Mr Baker has already said he would expect Boeing to pay compensation for its failure to deliver usable planes.
"They will have to if they deliver aeroplanes that can't fly," he said in the recent interview. "We are not buying aircraft to put in museums, we're buying them to fly."
It seems inevitable that there are armies of lawyers out there getting ready for similar discussions with Boeing on behalf other airlines customers.
But damage claims from airlines may not be the aerospace giant's biggest headache right now.
Worst-case scenario
A greater concern is probably the impact the latest scares might have on its own order book, which currently contains some 800 Dreamliners scheduled for production and delivery over the next decade.
A worst-case scenario would be one where airlines started backing away from their orders, though given that no-one currently makes a similar aircraft they are unlikely to do so - not least since there are no guarantees a forthcoming rival plane, the A350 from Airbus, will be introduced without problems of its own.
Another painful scenario would result from regulators discovering serious problems that would require time-consuming work that could delay future deliveries, perhaps resulting in demands for compensation payments or discounts on a vast scale.
That would not only threaten Boeing's break-even target of 1,100 Dreamliner deliveries over the next decade, but also sour its relations with airline customers at a time when there is much talk of the emergence of new rival aircraft manufacturers in Russia and China.
Against such scenarios, the best outcome for everyone - whether planemakers, airlines or end-customers - is one where faults are quickly identified, resulting in repairs being carried out within months.
And whatever the investigations throw up, everyone concerned are eager to stress that although cost concerns are deemed important, the only thing that really matters is that flights are safe.
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A man has been arrested after a woman found with serious injuries near a main road in Kent later died. | The woman had fallen from a road bridge on to land below the A21 near Tonbridge, at about 02:25 BST.
Kent Fire and Rescue Service were also called to tackle a car fire at the same location, Kent Police said.
Police are investigating if there was a link between the car fire and the woman's death. A 31-year-old man from London remains in custody.
Police are appealing for anyone with information to contact them.
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Ramblers, climbers, cyclists and, of course, photographers - the Peak District National Park has been attracting visitors for 70 years, ever since its designation in 1951 as the UK's first national park. But what are the stories that lie behind the views of sweeping valleys and sheer, rugged heights? BBC News Online meets people who turn to the park in their times of need. | By Amy WoodfieldBBC News, East Midlands
Diane Burrows says Chatsworth is her "sanctuary".
She first "fell in love" with the house and gardens on a school trip when she was just 10 years old.
"I remember going in the house and in one of the bedrooms there's a Stradivarius - a violin - painted as though you could just pick it up and play it," said the 63-year-old, who lives in Bramcote, Nottinghamshire.
"That image has stuck with me. There was something about the place even then."
Fifty-three years later - married and with four grown-up children - she said Chatsworth has become a place she visits whenever there is any significant family milestone or event.
"There's something about Chatsworth that is so evocative.
"We can sit on the grass with our flask of hot chocolate or we can walk with the house in view.
"It just restores us and renews us and we feel refreshed," she said.
A key memory for Mrs Burrows is the time she and her husband visited Chatsworth after dropping their daughter off at university.
She said: "It's over 20 years ago now - Leanne was the first one to go off to uni and we'd taken her as a family to Manchester.
"We took her on the Sunday - my husband had booked the Monday off because we knew we'd be good for nothing - and we planned to go to Chatsworth.
"It was a September day and it was glorious.
"There was something about the atmosphere of the place that kind of put something back. It was restorative."
James Lowery, 28, is from Sheffield but, despite living close to the Peak District, he only began visiting regularly two years ago.
"I suffer with anxiety and depression and, one day, I just thought to myself I'm going to buy a camera [and photograph the national park]," he said.
Capturing the Peak District's ever-changing vistas has since become a means to help him manage his mental health.
"The only way I can describe it really is it makes me feel somewhat normal.
"It clears my head from everything I've got going on with my anxiety.
"I don't really think much when I'm there, which is a good thing," he said.
Mr Lowery said the Peak District is the perfect place to capture the natural style of photography he has "come to know and love".
His favourite place to take pictures is Ladybower Reservoir.
"I enjoy spending hours searching for a new spot to take a picture or exploring around the River Derwent, watching the birds and other wildlife," he said.
Amy McDonald, 33, a photographer from Derby, has been going regularly to the Peak District since 2014.
She said the spot known as Surprise View holds a special place in her heart.
"From Derby, it's about an hour's drive - you have loads of different routes that you can pick from and you wouldn't expect the view you get.
"On a clear day, there are full 360 views featuring Mam Tor, Castleton, Higger Tor and Stanage Edge, to name a few.
"The reason I like it so much is, because no matter what season you go up, it looks different every single time," she said.
It's a place she has found especially therapeutic at times during 2020 when Covid restrictions eased.
She said the pandemic made her feel like she had had her "wings clipped".
"You're out in the fresh air with nothingness and it's just refreshing, rather than being amongst the hustle and bustle of the town centre or on the road or in a supermarket surrounded by a million people.
"It's just taking yourself away from what you do daily to enjoy what is on your doorstep and what is just naturally amazing," she said.
Zoe Cutter, 39, enjoys hiking in the Peak District and said a trip there "always feels like a mini holiday".
"Even though I've been going for 16 years, I'm always discovering new places.
"There are so many places that I've not yet seen that are really just on my doorstep.
"You don't need to go to the other side of the world to discover somewhere new," she said.
She was introduced to the national park by a colleague and friend.
"We found it helpful for de-stressing," she said.
She believes it to be "one of the most outstanding beauty spots in the country".
"My favourite recent memory was just enjoying a peaceful moment sat on the top of Derwent Valley, looking out at the scenery," she said.
Ms Cutter lives in a flat in Nottingham without its own garden.
She said the national park has been a "godsend" during the pandemic, at those times when travelling has been allowed.
The Peak District's rugged countryside - situated between Derbyshire, Cheshire, Staffordshire, Yorkshire and Greater Manchester - attracts more than 13 million people each year.
Paul Elliott, a professor of modern history at the University of Derby, said the 70th anniversary is an opportunity to reflect on the success of the park and its relevance during a time of crisis.
"It's interesting the parks were kind of a way to revitalise the country after World War Two.
"Although we haven't had a global war we're sort of in a parallel situation - it's national parks that are going to help us get out of the situation we're in now," he said.
The park's chief executive Sarah Fowler said: "The Peak District National Park has been here for 70 years, inspiring the lives of thousands of residents and millions of visitors.
"Whilst no-one could have anticipated the global circumstances in which we find ourselves looking forward to this remarkable milestone, it is perhaps holding a mirror to the Peak District's ground-breaking early years as people sought sanctuary within the open spaces that contrasted with our daily and urban lives - just as we are now."
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Related Internet Links
Peak District National Park
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The backers of a proposed carbon capture and storage project in Peterhead have admitted defeat in their efforts to secure European funding. | Shell and Scottish and Southern Energy (SSE) hoped the NER300 scheme would help part-finance plans to transform the Buchan town's power station.
Developers are now relying on securing money from the UK government.
Peterhead and Drax were earlier named as the preferred bidders in the £1bn project.
Under the planned scheme, greenhouse gas emissions from the power plant would be captured and transported to the Shell-operated Goldeneye gas field in the North Sea for storage, using, as far as possible, existing pipeline infrastructure.
Grangemouth and the Teesside Low Carbon Project had submitted unsuccessful bids.
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More children may be sent to the UK if foster homes cannot be found in Guernsey, the island's family placement service has warned.
| Team manager Michael Carter said despite the number of local foster carers doubling to 20 in the past two years, more were needed.
He said those especially in need of homes were aged nine and above.
Mr Carter said at this important time in a child's development they needed to be in a home with a family.
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Plans to permanently close a Buckinghamshire rubbish tip have been approved by county councillors. | The council's cabinet backed the closure of the Bledlow Ridge Recycling Centre near High Wycombe - as part of £1.2m of cuts to balance its books.
The meeting heard local councillors are still looking at whether it could be saved by being run as a commercial business.
Thousands of residents signed a petition opposing its closure.
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A teenager who was believed to have been holding a metal pole that touched an overhead electric line has died, police said. | The 17-year-old boy was electrocuted at Runshaw Hall Lane, Euxton at about 18:00 GMT on Saturday, Lancashire Police said.
Two other teenagers were also hurt in the incident.
It is understood to have happened near Euxton Villa Football Club, near Chorley.
Insp John McNamara said: "This appalling incident has led to the tragic death of a young man and my thoughts are first and foremost with his family and loved ones at this time. The family are being supported by specially trained officers."
Police are appealing for anyone with information to contact them.
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Lancashire Constabulary
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The prospect of a judicial review into the Guernsey Airport redevelopment will not distract the contractor, the Public Services minister has said. | The Public Services Department signed a £55m contract with Lagan Construction on Friday.
Two deputies have said they would bring forward a judicial review of the planning process.
However, Deputy Flouquet said: "We're legally obliged now to get on with the project."
He said: "We're not going to know what a judicial review outcome would be for quite a few months.
"If someone is minded to bring a judicial review to the Environment Department, well that is under a point of law and that's to do with the Environment Department and that individual."
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This is the eighth meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) that I've covered; so I'm always a bit chary of the possibility that over time I've become a more grumpy, wizened, curmudgeonly old cynic than the organisation's politics might merit. | Richard BlackFormer environment correspondent
So it's been refreshing to chat with a few first-timers this year - and confirmatory that some of them, after just three days of what's been a functional meeting by recent standards, already find the waters of hypocrisy and selective memory running deep and strong.
What's got the waters flowing stronger then ever is South Korea's proposal to begin whaling around its coast under regulations permitting hunting for scientific research.
Is science the rationale? South Korea's own statement here suggests it's not, admitting that pressure is coming from fishermen who say whales are eating too many fish, lowering their catches.
These are the same fishermen from communities near the town of Ulsan who routinely snare whales in their fishing nets, accidentally or not - perhaps as many as 150 per year - and are allowed under South Korean law to sell the meat to markets and restaurants.
The logical thing from their point of view would be to regularise what happens anyway, and make the hunting easier.
That was the implication of a submission that South Korea made a few years back as part of the "IWC peace process"; if Japanese villagers were allowed to hunt whales as part of an eventual compromise deal, they said, Koreans would demand the same right.
The peace process came to naught; but it's hard to escape the conclusion that the desire to satisfy a small but genuine whaling community is the real drive behind the scientific whaling proposal too, particularly with an election looming in December.
But whether or not the South Koreans really intend to go ahead with the plan, it's been easy for them to construct a case for it.
In the debate that followed the South Korean revelation here, delegate after delegate from anti-whaling governments cited and lauded the commercial whaling moratorium that their predecessors voted through in 1982.
Strangely, they all forgot to mention the bit of the moratorium wording where they promised to review it.
The South Koreans were happy to remind them; and to help any still suffering from the collective amnesia, it goes like this:
"This provision will be kept under review, based upon the best scientific advice, and by 1990 at the latest the Commission will undertake a comprehensive assessment of the effects of this decision on whale stocks and consider modification of this provision and the establishment of other catch limits".
Countries like South Korea and Japan are still waiting. Some whale stocks have indeed been re-assessed; but "considering modification" is not on the agenda of most IWC members, and they have no hesitation in making clear that it never will be.
Australia's commissioner Donna Petrochenko, for example, was as forthright as her populace would demand in declaring that "Australia is resolutely opposed to commercial whaling in any form" and "strongly supports the moratorium".
But that statement also makes clear that her government has no intention of honouring the international pledge it made 30 years ago. Nor does the US, UK, Germany, the Seychelles - yes, the Seychelles played a key role - or the rest of the roll call.
From a modern democratic point of view, they're quite right.
The world, as many say, has moved on, and a majority see whales as creatures to be hugged rather than harpooned. Few governments in Europe or Latin America would see their popularity rise by pledging to re-open the global whaling ban.
But what does it say to communities in South Korea, Japan, Greenland and so on who see whale hunting as quite normal?
South Korea mustered other arguments too.
On Tuesday, IWC governments voted to allow the Bequians of St Vincent and the Grenadines to continue hunting whales under "aboriginal subsistence" rules, designed for peoples with an established tradition.
The Bequians' tradition dates back about 130 years, to the time when Yankee whalers taught them how to do it.
Korea's, meanwhile, dates back 8-9,000 years - the oldest documented anywhere on the planet - with ancient rock art showing the unmistakeable coming together of harpoon and whale, and piles of bones testifying to their consumption.
But Koreans, unlike Bequians, aren't allowed to hunt anymore.
Both decisions are made according to the rules; but that's only OK if you think the rules are OK, which the Koreans don't.
The Korean "whales eat fish" argument is one of the most easily debunked in the book, and I'm sure the Koreans know it - as must the Japanese officials who used to deploy it as a justification for whaling.
But when anti-whaling countries here pointed out that it's nonsense, did they also recall that they had a chance four years ago to get Japan's signature on a conference motion saying it was nonsense, and blew it?
One delegate from a government that spoke vehemently in public against the South Korean proposal put it like this in private: "They're just frustrated".
And it makes scientific whaling their only legal option.
Are the Koreans genuinely intending to do it?
It's hard to tell. But what is clear is that the IWC's tangled and often conveniently forgotten history gives them reasons for real frustration, and the wherewithal to construct faux frustration if they choose.
As the Korean proposal puts it: "Good faith and pacta sunt servanda ('agreements must be kept') constitute the two fundamental principles of international relations."
Really?
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