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The lockstep is dead. | David CornockParliamentary correspondent, Wales
Its demise was approved by MPs without a vote this afternoon. The lockstep, for those among you who have better things to do than focus on fiscal devolution, was the clause of the Wales Bill that would have ensured any change in the basic rate of Welsh income tax had to be mirrored by a similar change in the higher or top rate. Our devolution dictionary is here, should you require further assistance.
Welsh Secretary Stephen Crabb told MPs: "By removing the lockstep we are removing what was widely seen as a deterrent to the Welsh government accepting the devolution of income tax in Wales."
He accused Labour First Minister Carwyn Jones of hiding behind "the self-imposed barrier of funding" in opposing the partial devolution of income tax until Wales gets a better financial settlement from Westminster. Mr Crabb suggested only Colin Jackson was capable of clearing all the hurdles Labour wanted to erect over income tax.
His Labour shadow, Owen Smith, said the UK government had performed a hand-brake U-turn on the lockstep months after it opposed its removal. He suggested that in the light of the Smith Commission report in Scotland there was now a case for going further with the devolution of income tax to Wales.
Mr Crabb said the tax powers transferred by the bill - and the full devolution of income tax - could see the Welsh government becoming responsible for raising around a quarter of the money it spends.
That share will only be reached after a referendum Carwyn Jones appears to be in no hurry to hold. Montgomeryshire Tory MP Glyn Davies suggested Mr Jones was now adding the non-devolution of air passenger duty to the list of hurdles stopping him holding a referendum.
Mr Davies's solution? Ditch the referendum and devolve tax powers if they're proposed in the winning party's (or parties') manifesto in next May's election. Wales Office Minister Alun Cairns gave a non-committal response to Mr Davies's suggestion.
There is sympathy in UK government circles for the tax referendum being a general plebiscite on a wider package of devolved powers but - if the Conservatives are still in power after the election - the more resistant Welsh government ministers appear to the idea of an early referendum the more chance there is of Mr Davies's campaign to scrap the vote being successful.
Its parliamentary journey over, the Wales Bill is expected to receive royal assent and become law early in 2015.
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How much alcohol do you drink? | People have been sharing their drinking habits after presenter Adrian Chiles revealed he sometimes drank more than 100 units a week - more than seven times the recommended limit.
He said drinking never affects his life and he considers himself a social drinker, not an alcoholic.
Other heavy drinkers have been speaking about their alcohol consumption.
'Do I want to stop? No'
Paul Tomlinson, 48, from Thornton-Cleveleys in Lancashire says it is "easy to rack up drinking when you're sat at home".
"I regularly drink 80 to 100 units a week, most of it between Friday and Sunday.
"On each night I will usually have two or three beers - sometimes alcohol free now actually - followed by a bottle of wine and then two or three large gin and tonics.
"This is roughly 16 to 18 units a night for three consecutive nights. I will then do at least two or three more bottles of wine in the week with a couple of gin and tonics again.
"Do I consider myself an alcoholic? No! Do I want to stop drinking at the level I do? Not really.
"I have a disabled son who is 24 so don't go out often and as a result drink more at home.
"I don't go to bed feeling outrageously drunk and I don't black out on the sofa."
'£500 a month on wine'
One man, who chose to remain anonymous, says his father was an "old fashioned" alcoholic who started drinking in the morning - but that he is not an alcoholic.
"I find myself in the habit of putting away one and a half to two bottles of white wine every night, unless I'm really thirsty in which case it might be two and a half bottles.
"I start at 6 or 7pm, couple of glasses whilst preparing family supper, continue through PS4 "wind down" time, another couple of glasses.
"Then usually finish off the second bottle whilst listening to music. Tada! £500 a month on wine.
"I'm in a strange position, as I can (and do) stop when I want to - sometimes for a month or two just to prove to myself I'm not an alcoholic like my dad.
"I'll go out with my mates and not touch a drop, again - just to prove a point to myself. And yet I still drink far, far too much.
"I'm rarely drunk nowadays, although obviously I still don't drive. I just wish someone would make a drink that tastes as nice as wine, without the alcohol.
"I'm currently losing weight and so have "limited" myself to a half to one bottle of wine a night.
"I find that the problem is the habit more than alcohol. I smoked 20 plus a day for 20 years then quit five years ago, with no patches etc.
"Never felt like a relapse, never been tempted to have 'just one'. I think alcohol is in the same category.
"Although, as I can testify with my father, the drug is insidious and rather than just kill your body, if you let it, it will kill your personality first."
'I'm all or nothing'
Adrian Chiles' account of his alcohol consumption "mirrors almost exactly" how Mark Baker, 58, from North Somerset, says he drinks.
"Like him I drink about 80 to 100 units a week and have done so for many years.
"I have a slight fatty liver (as does he) but otherwise perfectly OK. I have never suffered from depression or anxiety.
"I drink mostly out of habit. I never get drunk, drink and drive, I never drink in the mornings or at lunchtime, I just like a drink in the evening to wind down and relax.
"I am an export manager so drinking is part of the territory.
"Last year in October I stopped drinking for a month. I was worried that I was dependent on it.
"I found it easy to do especially as there are so many products on the market with low or no alcohol. I could still have a beer, glass of wine or even a gin and tonic. Yes, there is low alcohol spirit.
"Like Adrian, I will probably give up drinking rather than rationing it as when I have tried that in the past it never seems to work. I am definitely an all or nothing person."
'I will try and cut down'
Annemarie McAleese, 48, from Belfast, owns her own restaurant and says she starts drinking wine when she gets home as she "potters about".
"On average I would drink two bottles of white wine each night, and have done for the last seven years.
"I have my own business, and work in it five or six days per week.
"After reading this article, I think now is the time to rethink my drinking habits.
"It's a very bad habit. I think I will try to cut down. I think I use owning my business as an excuse because it can be quite stressful.
"I won't watch the programme with my husband because I don't need somebody yapping in my ear 'you need to stop', I need to do this for myself."
'High functioning alcoholic'
John, from Essex, says he considered himself a "moderate social drinker" until he developed liver disease.
"Then I gave up drinking altogether but the liver disease worsened leading to many hospital visits and the need for a liver transplant.
"I had never missed work or put drink ahead of all else but when I detailed out my daily drinking to numerous doctors over a nine-month period I was embarrassed to realise that I was effectively a high-functioning alcoholic.
"I am pleased to say that thanks to my organ donor I have led a healthy, happy life for the last eight years and become a grandfather three times.
"Something I would have missed if I had carried on as before.
"If Adrian's show makes anyone seriously look at the amount they drink and reduce it then he is doing a great job.
"On the subject of giving up alcohol I feel sometimes too much is made of how difficult this is, rather than concentrating on the benefits of being sober.
"Better health, better sleep, no hangovers, higher alertness and an ability to enjoy things with a clear head."
Alcohol and health
The number of adults who say they drink alcohol is at its lowest level since surveys began in 2005, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
The NHS recommends not drinking more than 14 units of alcohol a week. If you do drink that much, it is best to spread it over three or more days.
One unit of alcohol is 10ml of pure alcohol, which is equivalent to half a pint of normal-strength lager or a single measure (25ml) of spirits.
A small glass of wine contains about 1.5 units, a standard glass is 2.1 and a bottle of wine contains 10 units.
Meanwhile, a can of lager, beer or cider is two units. A pint is two or three units, depending on whether it is lower or higher strength.
According to the NHS, someone may need help if:
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Today I want to talk about immigration.
| Just as this government has a long term plan for where we are taking our country so within that we have a long-term plan for immigration.
Immigration benefits Britain, but it needs to be controlled.
It needs to be fair.
And it needs to be centred around our national interest.
That is what I want.
And let me tell you why I care so passionately about getting this right - and getting the whole debate on immigration right in our country.
When I think about what makes me proud to be British yes, it is our history, our values, our creativity, our compassion but there is something else too.
I am extremely proud that together we have built a successful, multi-racial democracy.
A country where in one or two generations people can come with nothing and rise as high as their talent allows.
A country whose success has been founded not on building separate futures, but rather coming together to build a common home.
We have always been an open nation, welcoming those who want to make a contribution and build a decent life for themselves and their families.
From the Jewish communities who came to Britain before World War One to the West Indians who docked at Tilbury on the Windrush and helped to rebuild our country after World War Two.
Even at times of war and danger, when our island status has protected us, we have offered sanctuary to those fleeing tyranny and persecution.
We will never forget the Polish and Czech pilots who helped save this country in its hour of need and the Poles who went on to settle here, help build post war Britain and indeed contribute so much to our country today.
And we are proud of the role we played in providing a haven to the Ugandan Asians in the early 1970s who now count among their number four Members of the House of Lords, some of the UK's most successful businessmen, a BBC News presenter and the owner of a company providing china to the royal households.
Our openness is part of who we are.
We should celebrate it. We should never allow anyone to demonise it.
And we must never give in to those who would throw away our values, with the appalling prospect of repatriating migrants who are here totally legally and have lived here for years.
We are Great Britain because of immigration, not in spite of it.
So it is fundamental to the future of our country that we get this issue right.
And in doing so, there are three dangerous views which we need to confront.
First, is the complacent view that says the levels of immigration we've seen in the past decade aren't really a problem at all.
That mass migration is an unavoidable by-product of a new world order of globalisation.
That globalisation is an unalloyed good - and those complaining about immigration just need to get with the modern world.
Often the people who have these views are those who have no direct experience of the impact of high levels of migration.
They have never waited on a social housing list or found that their child's classroom is overcrowded or felt that their community has changed too fast.
And what makes everyone else really angry is that if they dare to express these concerns they can be made to feel guilty about doing so.
We should be clear.
It is not wrong to express concern about the scale of people coming into the country.
People have understandably become frustrated. It boils down to one word: control.
People want Government to have control over the numbers of people coming here and the circumstances in which they come, both from around the world and from within the European Union.
They want control over who has the right to receive benefits and what is expected of them in return.
They want to know that foreign criminals can be excluded - or if already here, removed.
And they want us to manage carefully the pressures on our schools, our hospitals and our housing.
If we are to maintain this successful open meritocratic democracy we treasure, we have to maintain faith in government's ability to control the rate at which people come to this country.
And yet in recent years, it has become clear that successive Governments have lacked control.
People want grip. I get that. And I completely agree.
To respond to this with complacency is both wrong and dangerous.
The second dangerous view is to think we can somehow pull up the drawbridge and retreat from the world, shutting off immigration altogether.
People who make this argument try to dress it up as speaking up for our country.
But this isolationism is actually deeply unpatriotic.
Yes, Britain is an island nation.
But we have never been an insular one.
Throughout our long history, we have always looked outward, not inward.
We have used the seas that surround our shores not to cut ourselves off from the world, but to reach out to it - to carry our trade to the four corners of the earth.
And with that trade has come people, companies, jobs and investment.
We have always understood that our national greatness is built on our openness.
We see that every day.
In our National Health Service, which would grind to a halt without the hundreds of thousands who have come from overseas to help run it.
In the City of London, the financial epicentre of the world, where so many, from so many different countries, have come to make Britain their home.
In the Bank of England, where the best Central Banker in the world, a Canadian, is our Governor.
In our world class universities, where students and indeed professors have come from all over the world.
This is modern Britain.
A country that has come out of recession to become the fastest growing advanced economy in the world.
That has happened in part because we are an open nation.
And for the sake of British jobs, British livelihoods and British opportunities we must fight this dangerous and misguided view that our nation can withdraw from the world and somehow all will be well.
The third view we need to confront is the idea that a successful plan to control immigration is only about immigration policy and controls.
A modern immigration plan is not just about the decisions you take on the people you allow into your country.
It is also about the education you provide to your own people and the rights and responsibilities at the heart of your welfare system.
Because the problem hasn't just been a simplistic one of too many people coming here it's also been too many British people untrained and too many British people without the incentive to work because they can get a better income living on benefits.
Even at the end of the so-called boom years, there were around five-million people in our country of working age but on out-of-work benefits.
And this was at the same time as the last government enabled the largest wave of migration in our country's history.
I want young British people schooled enough, skilled enough, keen enough to work so there is less demand for foreign workers.
Put simply, our job is to educate and train up our youth, so we are less reliant on immigration to fill our skills gaps.
And any politician who doesn't have a serious plan for welfare and education, has no sensible long-term plan for controlling immigration.
In taking on these three views we also need to choose our language carefully.
We must anchor the debate in fact not prejudice.
We must have no truck with those who use immigration to foment division, or as a surrogate for other agendas.
We should distrust those who sell the snake oil of simple solutions.
There are no simple solutions.
Managing immigration is hard.
Not only here.
But in every major developed economy.
Certainly in Europe.
Look at Italy, where migration from North Africa is a vital issue.
Look at Germany, where benefit tourism is a huge concern.
Or look at the United States, the ultimate melting pot, where President Obama has just announced sweeping reforms.
Look at Australia, whose points-based system we now operate in Britain, where the issue of immigration dominated their last election campaign and where migrant numbers are actually higher, pro rata, than in the UK.
The British people understand this.
They know that a modern, knowledge-based economy like ours needs immigration.
There is a parallel here.
On the EU, most British people don't want a false choice between the status quo or leaving.
They want reform and a referendum.
On immigration, they don't want limitless immigration and they don't want no immigration.
They want controlled immigration.
And they are right.
So what are the facts?
Over the last ten years, immigration to the UK has soared, while the number of Britons going to work abroad has remained roughly the same.
As a result, net immigration - a reasonably good way of measuring the pressure of immigration - has gone up significantly.
To give you some idea of the scale.
In terms of the net figures.
In the thirty years leading up to 2004, net migration in the UK was around one million.
In just the next seven years, it was 1.5 million.
The gross figures are that 8.3 million people came to the UK as long-term migrants in the thirty years leading up to 2004.
And a further 4 million came in the next seven years.
What caused this increase?
Certainly, a lax approach to immigration by the last Government, which they themselves have since admitted.
For example, their points system included an entire category for people outside the EU with no skills to come to the UK.
It was too easy for foreign nationals to become citizens.
There was a huge increase in asylum claims.
There were disproportionate numbers of jobs going to foreign workers.
The welfare system allowed new EU migrant workers to claim immediately, without having paid in, which is in contrast to many other countries.
And, of course, there was the decision by the last Government not to impose transitional controls on the eight new countries which entered the EU in 2004.
With their economies considerably poorer than ours - and with almost every other EU country opting to keep controls - it made the UK a uniquely attractive destination for the citizens of those countries.
One million people came to Britain after that decision.
When we came to office in 2010, we were determined to get to grips with this problem.
So we set a clear target: to return net migration to 1990s levels when even though we had an open economy, proper immigration controls meant immigration was in the tens of thousands, not hundreds of thousands.
And we set to work on it immediately, with a clear plan to tackle non-EU migration in a targeted way while continuing to permit companies to bring in the skilled workers they needed and allowing universities to attract the best talent from around the world.
So we took action to cut numbers and tackle abuse on every visa route for those coming to Britain from outside Europe.
We imposed an annual cap on economic migration of 20,700.
We clamped down on bogus students and stopped nearly 800 fake colleges bringing people in.
We insisted that those wishing to have family come and join them must earn at least £18,600 per year and pass an English language test.
In addition, we have made Britain a much harder place to exist as an illegal immigrant.
This is all relentless, painstaking work.
I have been out on the ground with Border Force staff.
I have talked with the immigration officers who used to have no choice but to admit what they felt sure were fake students, claiming to come here to study without being able to speak a word of English.
We have tightened up across the board: not only at the border, but inside the country too by stopping illegal immigrants from opening a bank account, obtaining a driving licence, and renting a home.
These are measures that other parties did not support but which I believe are essential and need to be carried forward further.
We have also brought back vital exit checks at ports and airports.
And by April, those checks will be in force at all our major ports and airports.
So we will be able not only to count people in, but to count them out again.
And in Calais we have created a £12 million fund to strengthen security, and we are working more closely than ever with our French partners to tackle illegal immigration and track down people smugglers.
This determined effort is making a real difference.
Even after yesterday's disappointing figures, net migration from outside Europe is down by almost a quarter, and falling close to the levels seen in the late 1990s.
Without our reforms, in the last year alone, 50,000 more migrants from outside the EU would have come to the UK.
But if I am Prime Minister after the election, we will go further.
We will revoke licences from colleges and businesses which fail to do enough to prevent large numbers of migrants they sponsor from overstaying their visas.
We will extend our new policy of 'deport first, appeal later' to cover all immigration appeals where a so-called right to family life is invoked.
We will rapidly implement the requirement, included in our 2014 Immigration Act, for landlords to check the immigration status of their tenants.
We will do all of these things.
And we will continue with our welfare and education reforms making sure that it always pays to work training more British workers right across the country, but especially in local areas that are heavily reliant on migrant labour and supporting those communities with a new fund to help meet the additional demands on local services.
We will also introduce stronger powers to tackle criminal gangs who bring people into this country and then withhold their passports and their pay.
And I am proud that today we are publishing our Modern Slavery Strategy, clamping down on those appalling criminals who try and traffic people here.
But our action to cut migration from outside the EU has not been enough to meet our target of cutting the overall numbers to the tens of thousands.
The figures yesterday demonstrate that again.
As we have reduced the numbers coming to the UK from outside the EU, the numbers from inside the EU have risen.
In other words, our squeeze in one area has been offset by a bulge in another.
The ambition remains the right one. But it's clear: it's going to take more time, more work and more difficult long term decisions to get there.
Some people disagree with the whole concept of a net migration target, because they say you can be blown off course by the numbers emigrating each year.
But there are two reasons why I think it's worthwhile.
It measures the overall impact of migration in our country.
And emigration figures from Britain are relatively constant.
But I accept the logic of the argument about emigration.
So as well as sticking to our ambition, we will set out additional metrics in the future so that people can clearly chart progress on the scale of migration from outside the EU - and from within it.
So let me set out why net migration from the EU is rising and what we are going to do about it.
The first thing to say is that it is a tribute to Britain that so many people want to come here.
That has not always been the case.
In the 1970s, when Britain was the sick man of Europe, more people were leaving Britain than coming here.
Today, they are coming for perfectly understandable reasons.
We are currently the jobs factory for Europe.
Our unemployment is tumbling, and is now about half the level of France and a quarter the level of Spain.
And whereas in the past the majority of the growth in employment was taken up by foreign nationals last year two thirds of that growth benefited British workers.
While some Eurozone economies remain weak, our economy is now growing faster than every major economy in Europe and is the fastest growing economy in the G7.
That fact - combined with our generous welfare system, including for those in work - makes the UK a magnetic destination for workers from other European countries.
And let me be clear: the great majority of those who come here from Europe come to work, work hard and pay their taxes.
They contribute to our country.
They are willing to travel across the continent in search of a better life for them and their families.
Many of them come just for a short period - a year or two - before returning home.
And once economic growth returns to the countries of the Eurozone, and those economies start to grow and prosper, the economic pendulum will start to swing back.
That will require far-reaching structural reform and removing barriers to job creation.
And I welcome the intention of the new Commission to tackle these issues: they will have the whole-hearted support of the UK in doing so.
So what, my European counterparts say to me, is the issue?
They say: you have unemployment falling and your economy growing: this does not look to us like a serious problem.
Indeed, many say they 'wish we had the sort of problems you have'.
And some in Europe just think our problems are because our welfare system is a soft touch.
But this Government has already taken unprecedented action to make our welfare system fairer and less open to abuse, all within the current rules.
And these reforms, including restricting EU jobseeker entitlements, will save our taxpayers half a billion pounds over the next five years.
But even with these changes, the pressure is still very great.
In some areas, the number of migrants we are seeing is far higher than our local authorities, our schools and our hospitals can cope with.
They are much higher than anything the EU has known before in its history.
And they are far higher than what the founding fathers envisaged when the European Economic Community was established in 1957 or what Margaret Thatcher and Helmut Kohl envisaged when they signed the Single European Act in 1986.
One million people coming to one Member State is a vast migration, on a scale that has not happened before in peacetime.
And yesterday's figures show that the scale of migration is still very great.
So many people, so fast, is placing real burdens on our public services.
There are secondary schools where the turnover of pupils can be as high as one third of the entire school in a year.
There are primary schools where dozens of languages are spoken with only a small minority speaking English as their first language.
There are hospitals where maternity units are under great pressure because birth rates have increased dramatically.
There are Accident and Emergency departments under serious pressure.
And there is pressure on social housing that cannot be met.
And in a country with a generous, non-contributory welfare system, all this is raising real issues of fairness.
People cannot understand how those who have not paid in can immediately take out.
And they find it incomprehensible that a family coming from another EU country can claim child benefit from the UK - at UK rates - and send it back to children still living in their home country.
When trust in the EU is already so low, we cannot afford to leave injustices like this to fester.
Some of our partners will say: 'But you are not unique'.
Germany, for instance, has had more EU migrants than the UK.
But Germany is in a different situation.
Germany's population is falling, and Britain's is rising.
Now dealing with this issue in the EU is not straightforward, because of the freedom of movement to which all EU Member States sign up.
I want to be clear: Britain supports the principle of the free movement of workers.
We benefit from it, and 1.3 million British citizens exercise their right to go and live and work, and in many cases retire, in other European countries.
Accepting the principle of free movement of workers is a key to being part of the single market.
A market from which Britain has benefited enormously.
So we do not want to destroy that principle or turn it on its head.
Those who argue that Norway or Switzerland offer a better model for Britain ignore one crucial fact: they have each had to sign up to the principle of freedom of movement in order to access the single market and both countries actually have far higher per capita immigration than the UK.
But freedom of movement has never been an unqualified right, and we now need to allow it to operate on a more sustainable basis in the light of the experience of recent years.
That does not mean a closed door regime or a fundamental assault on the principle of free movement.
What it does mean is finding arrangements to allow a Member State like the UK to restore a sense of fairness and bring down the current spike in numbers.
My objective is simple: to make our immigration system fairer and reduce the current exceptionally high level of migration from within the EU into the UK.
I am completely committed to delivering that - and I am ready to discuss with our partners any methods which achieve it, while maintaining the overall principle to which they, and we, attach importance.
So let me set out the action we intend to take to cut migration from within Europe by dealing with abuse restricting the ability of migrants to stay here without a job and reducing the incentives for lower paid, lower skilled workers to come here in the first place.
First, we want to create the toughest system in the EU for dealing with abuse of free movement.
This includes stronger powers to deport criminals and stop them coming back.
And tougher and longer re-entry bans for all those who abuse free movement including beggars, rough sleepers, fraudsters and people who collude in sham marriages.
We must also deal with the extraordinary situation where it's easier for an EU citizen to bring a
non-EU spouse to Britain, than it is for a British citizen to do the same.
At the moment, if a British citizen wants to bring, say, a South American partner to the UK, then we ask for proof that they meet an income threshold and can speak English.
But EU law means we cannot apply these tests to EU migrants. Their partners can just come straight into our country without any proper controls at all.
And this has driven a growing industry in sham marriages, with this loophole accounting for most of the 4,000 bogus marriages that are thought to take place in Britain every year.
We have got to end this abuse.
Second, we want EU jobseekers to have a job offer before they come here and to stop UK taxpayers having to support them if they don't.
This government inherited an indefensible system where the State - our taxpayers - paid EU jobseekers to look for work indefinitely and even paid their rent while they did so.
In total that meant the British taxpayer was supporting a typical EU jobseeker with £600 a month.
We have already begun to change this.
We've scrapped housing benefit for EU jobseekers.
And we have limited benefits claims to three months for those EU migrants who have no prospect of a job.
But now we are going to go further.
We are overhauling our welfare system with a new benefit called Universal Credit.
This will replace existing benefits such as Jobseekers' Allowance that support people out of work.
And its legal status means we can regain control over who we pay it to.
So as Universal Credit is introduced we will pass a new law that means EU jobseekers will not be able to claim it.
And we will do this within existing EU law. So instead of £600, they will get nothing.
We also want to restrict the time that jobseekers can legally stay in this country.
So if an EU jobseeker has not found work within six months, they will be required to leave.
Let's be clear what this will mean.
At the moment 40 per cent of those coming to work in the UK do not have a job offer when they arrive - the highest proportion in the EU.
Many of these will no longer come.
EU jobseekers who don't pay in will no longer get anything out.
And those who do come will no longer be able to stay if they can't find work.
There was a time when freedom of movement meant Member States could expect workers to have a job offer before they arrived and this will return us closer to that position.
Third, we want to reduce the number of EU workers coming to the UK.
Of course, that means never repeating the mistake that was made in 2004.
So we will insist that when new countries are admitted to the EU in the future, free movement will not apply to those new members until their economies have converged much more closely with existing Member States.
Future accession treaties require unanimous agreement of all Member States.
So the UK will ensure this change is included.
But we also need to do more now to reduce migration from current Member States.
And that means reducing the incentives for lower paid, low skilled EU workers to come here in the first place.
Our welfare system is unusual in Europe. It pays out before you pay into it.
That gives us particular difficulties, especially in respect of benefits while you are working - so called 'in work benefits'.
Someone coming to the UK from elsewhere in the EU, who is employed on the minimum wage and who has two children back in their home country, will receive around £700 per month in benefits in the UK.
This is more than twice what they would receive in Germany. And three times more than in France.
No wonder so many people want to come to Britain.
These tax credits and other welfare payments are a big financial incentive, and we know that over 400,000 EU migrants take advantage of them.
This has got to change.
So I will insist that in the future those who want to claim tax credits and child benefit must live here and contribute to our country for a minimum of four years.
If their child is living abroad, then there should be no child benefit or child tax credit at all no matter how long they have worked in the UK and no matter how much tax they have paid.
And we will introduce a new residency requirement for social housing - meaning that you can't even be considered for a council house unless you have been here for at least four years.
This is about saying: our welfare system is like a national club.
It's made up of the contribution of hardworking British taxpayers.
Millions of people doing the right thing, paying into the system, generation after generation.
It cannot be right that migrants can turn up and claim full rights to this club straightaway.
So let's be clear what all of these changes taken together will mean.
EU migrants should have a job offer before they come here.
UK taxpayers will not support them if they don't.
And once they are in work, they won't get benefits or social housing from Britain unless they have been here for at least four years.
Yes, these are radical reforms
But they are also reasonable and fair.
And the British people need to know that changes to welfare to cut EU migration will be an absolute requirement in the renegotiation.
I am confident that they will reduce significantly EU migration to the UK.
And that is what I am determined to deliver.
My very clear aim is to be able to negotiate these changes for the whole EU, because I believe they would benefit the whole EU.
They take account of the particular circumstances of our own welfare system, and they go with the grain of what other Member States with high numbers of EU benefit claimants are considering.
And of course we would expect them to apply on a reciprocal basis to British citizens elsewhere in the EU.
But if negotiating for the whole EU should not prove possible, I would want to see them included in a UK-only settlement.
Now I know many will say this is impossible - just impossible.
Some of the most ardent supporters of the European Union will say it is impossible - fearing that if an accommodation is made for Britain, the whole European Union will unravel.
And those who passionately want Britain to leave the European Union will say it is impossible - and that the only way to control migration into the UK is to leave the EU.
On this, at least, they will agree.
To those who claim change is impossible, I respond with one word, the most powerful word in the English language.
Why?
Why is it impossible?
Why is it impossible to find a way forward on this issue, and on other issues, that meet the real concerns of a major Member State, one of the biggest net contributors to the EU budget?
I simply don't accept such defeatism.
I say to our European partners.
We have real concerns.
Our concerns are not outlandish or unreasonable.
We deserve to be heard, and we must be heard.
Not only for Britain's sake, but for the sake of Europe as a whole.
Because what is happening in Britain is not unique to Britain.
Across the European Union, issues of migration are causing real concern and raising real questions.
Can movements on the scale we have seen in recent years always be in the best interests of the EU and wider European solidarity?
Can it be in the interests of central and eastern European Member States that so many of their brightest and best are drawn away from home when they are needed most?
This concern takes a different form in different Member States, and has different causes.
But it has one common feature: it is contributing to a corrosion of trust in the European Union and the rise of populist parties.
If we ignore it, it will not go away.
Across the European Union we are seeing the frustrations of our citizens, demonstrated in the results of the European Elections.
Leadership means dealing with those frustrations, not turning a deaf ear to them.
And we have a duty to act on them, to restore the democratic legitimacy of the EU.
So I say to our friends in Europe.
It's time we talked about this properly.
And a conversation cannot begin with the word "no".
The entire European Union is built on a gift for compromise, for finding ways round difficult corners, for accepting that sometimes we have to avoid making the perfect the enemy of the good.
That is the way the EU operates. That is the way a Union of 28 democracies has to operate.
Flexibility not rigidity.
Creativity not dogma.
Only this month a way was found to accommodate France breaching its budget deficit limit, as everyone knew it would be.
And it can be done again.
Two years ago, at Bloomberg, I set out my vision for a reformed European Union.
I stand by every word of that speech today.
A reformed EU, in the interests not only of Britain, but of every Member State.
Of course I know the arguments that will be put.
It will be argued that freedom of movement is a holy principle - one of the four cardinal principles of the EU, alongside freedom of capital, of services and of goods - and that what we are suggesting is heresy.
To which I say: hang on a moment.
No one claims that the other three freedoms have yet been fully implemented.
Far from it.
It is still not possible for a British optician to trade freely in Italy, or a French company to raise funds in Germany.
It is still not possible for consumers to access their Netflix or iTunes accounts across borders in the EU.
And freedom of movement itself is not absolute.
There are rules for when new Member States join the EU precisely to cope with excessive numbers.
So why can't there be steps to allow Member States a greater degree of control, in order to uphold a general and important principle, but one which is already qualified?
And of course freedom of movement has evolved significantly over the years from applying to job-holders to job-seekers too from job-seekers to their non-European family members and from a right to work, to a right to claim a range of benefits.
So I am saying to our European partners.
I ask you to work with us on this.
I know some of you will be saying: why bother?
Some of you may even say that in public.
To which my answer is clear: because it is worth it.
Look at what Britain brings to Europe.
The fastest growing economy and the second largest.
One of Europe's strongest powers.
A country which in many ways invented the single market, and which brings real heft to Europe's influence on the world stage.
Here is an issue which matters to the British people, and to our future in the European Union.
The British people will not understand - frankly I will not understand - if a sensible way through cannot be found, which will help settle this country's place in the EU once and for all.
And to the British people I say this.
I share your concern, and I am acting on it.
I know how much this matters.
Judge me by my record in Europe.
I promised we would cut the EU budget - and we have.
I said I would veto a Treaty that was not in our interests, and I did.
I do not pretend this will be easy.
It won't.
It will require a lot of hard pounding, a lot of hard negotiation.
But it will be worth it.
Because those who promise you simple solutions are betraying you.
Those who say we would certainly be better off outside the EU only ever tell you part of the story.
Of course we would survive, there is no doubt about that.
But we would need to weigh in the balance the loss of our instant access to the single market, and our right to take the decisions that regulate it.
And we would of course lose the automatic right for the 1.3 million British citizens who today are living and working elsewhere in Europe to do so.
That is something we would want to think carefully about giving up.
For me, I have one test, and one test only: what is in the best, long term interests of Britain?
That is the measure against which everything must be judged.
If you elect me as Prime Minister in May, I will negotiate to reform the European Union, and Britain's relationship with it.
This issue of free movement will be a key part of that negotiation.
If I succeed, I will, as I have said, campaign to keep this country in a reformed EU.
If our concerns fall on deaf ears and we cannot put our relationship with the EU on a better footing, then of course I rule nothing out.
But I am confident that, with goodwill and understanding, we can and will succeed.
At the end of the day, whatever happens, the final decision will be yours, when you place your cross on the ballot paper in the referendum to decide whether Britain remains in the European Union.
That decision is for you, the British people, and for you alone.
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Relief that it is all over. | By Gavin StampPolitical reporter, BBC News, Liverpool
That seems to be the common sentiment of Labour activists at the party conference in Liverpool in the aftermath of Jeremy Corbyn's re-election as Labour leader.
"I am very happy and a lot of people are very happy the decision has been made and we can move forward," says Jacqueline Griffiths, from Sevenoaks.
There is frustration that the leadership squabbles have left Labour in virtual limbo with, according to one party member, "no ability to focus on the issues affecting the country".
Helen Clarkson, from Central Suffolk, says the last few months have been very "disheartening" and Mr Corbyn now needs "time to lead" and show what he can do.
But she worries his re-election will not put an end to the battles between the leadership and many of the MPs.
"There is a lot of manoeuvring behind the scenes that we are not privy to. What general members have to say, what we feel and how people have voted is one thing but getting the work done is another."
'Second coup'
And there are those who believe opponents of the leader will stop at nothing to get rid of him.
"I am slightly concerned there will be a second [coup] attempt," says Marie, a member of Mr Corbyn's own Islington North constituency party. "They will find other ways of gradually destroying him."
Those in positions of power, she argues, should have spent more time listening to party members and defending the elected leader of the party.
"We could do with an alternative deputy leader. I actually voted for Tom [Watson] but he has not been supportive of Jeremy and seemingly behind the plotters."
While Mr Watson - who was elected with his own mandate last year - is not likely to be going anywhere, the future of other leading MPs is occupying the thoughts of many members.
"The obvious problem is that a lot of the MPs are unhappy and that is difficult," says Rob Hall from Bedford.
While he does not support the deselection of dissenting MPs in the run-up to the next election, he can see a scenario in which it could not be avoided.
"People have been very difficult with Corbyn right from the very start, just because it was him," he says. "If I had someone as an MP who was making life difficult for the leader, I would be wanting a deselection frankly."
But he says it should not be in Mr Corbyn's gift to get rid of MPs who disagree with him: "I don't think anyone nationally, like Jeremy Corbyn, should be saying to people deselect. It is up to people in their constituencies."
'Farcical'
Amid talk of the return of shadow cabinet elections as a way of appeasing Corbyn critics, there are those who just can't see how the party leader can co-exist with MPs who openly disagree with him.
"When Jeremy appointed [former shadow defence secretary] Maria Eagle who disagreed with him [on Trident] it was farcical," Mr Hall says.
For some local activists, including one Birmingham councillor elected in May, it really has been business as usual and the turmoil at the top of the party has made little difference to their day-to-day work.
"While this has been going on upstairs, we have been concentrating on local issues," she says.
But don't people she represents have strong feelings about Mr Corbyn? "Some do, some don't," she replies. "Some just want to make sure they get their rubbish cleared every week - what they see as important in their life."
But others believe it is naive to pretend that the leadership issue doesn't come up on doorsteps and won't have an impact on Labour's chances in the next election.
"The party has to come together but - and it is a big but - there are members of the top team, possibly including Jeremy, which need to be more inclusive," says Elaine Sammarco, from Lewes in Sussex.
"We are hearing the slate is being wiped clean which is very helpful and Jeremy is reaching out but it is the next step and how is that going to happen. I would like to be optimistic that will happen but I am sceptical."
'Broad church'
While Theresa May's grammar school expansion plan has galvanised Labour and, in the words of one member "done Jeremy's job for him", many are openly speculating about whether the PM will be "tempted" to call an early election.
While many genuinely believe Labour can climb an electoral mountain and prevail if the poll is held in 2020, there is trepidation about what might happen if the prime minister goes to the country early.
"Obviously I hope we would have a Labour leader but my fear is that Theresa May will call an election quite quickly and we won't have time for people to truly come together and mobilise properly," says Elaine Clarkson.
In the meantime, Labour members can only cross their fingers and hope for the best and there are many who believe the party may have already touched its electoral nadir.
"Everyone shares the same beliefs," says Daisy, from Wallasey, who was motivated to join Labour by its 2015 election defeat. "It is a broad church but everyone has the same aim which is a Labour government."
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A chronology of key events:
| 1500s - Ottomans absorb part of Yemen into their empire, but are expelled in the 1600s.
1839 - Aden comes under British rule, and when the Suez Canal opens in 1869 serves as a major refuelling port.
1849 - Ottomans return to north.
1918 - Ottoman Empire dissolves, North Yemen gains independence and is ruled by Imam Yahya.
1948 - Yahya assassinated, but his son Ahmad fights off opponents of feudal rule and succeeds his father.
1962 - Imam Ahmad dies and is succeeded by his son, but army officers seize power and set up the Yemen Arab Republic, sparking civil war between royalists supported by Saudi Arabia and republicans backed by Egypt.
South Yemen formed
1967 - Britain withdraws from the south after years of a pro-independence insurgency, and its former territories unite as the People's Republic of Yemen.
1969 - A communist coup renames the south the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen and reorients it towards the Soviet bloc.
1970 - Republican forces triumph in the North Yemen civil war.
1972 - Border clashes between two Yemens; ceasefire brokered by Arab League.
1978 - Ali Abdallah Saleh becomes president of North Yemen.
1979 - Fresh fighting between the two Yemens.
1986 - Thousands die in power struggle in south, which effectively drives the first generation of leaders from office.
Haidar Abu Bakr al-Attas takes over, and begins to work towards unification of the two states.
Uneasy unity
1990 May - The two Yemens unite as the Republic of Yemen with Ali Abdallah Saleh as president, as the Soviet bloc implodes. Tension between former states endures.
1994 May-July - President Saleh declares a state of emergency and dismisses Vice-President Ali Salem al-Beid and other southern officials, who declare the secession of the south before being defeated by the national army.
.
1995 - Yemen and Eritrea clash over the disputed Hanish Islands in the Red Sea. International arbitration awarded the bulk of the archipelago to Yemen in 1998.
Al-Qaeda attacks
2000 October - US naval vessel USS Cole damaged in al-Qaeda suicide attack in Aden. Seventeen US personnel killed.
2001 February - Violence in run-up to disputed municipal polls and referendum, which backs extension to presidential term and powers.
2002 February - Yemen expels more than 100 foreign Islamic clerics in crackdown on al-Qaeda.
2002 October - Al-Qaeda attacks and badly damages oil supertanker MV Limburg in Gulf of Aden, killing one and injuring 12 crew members, and costing Yemen dear in lost port revenues.
Houthi insurgency
2004 June-August - Hundreds die as troops battle Shia insurgency led by Hussein al-Houthi in the north.
2005 March-April - More than 200 people are killed in a resurgence of fighting between government forces and supporters of the slain rebel cleric Hussein al-Houthi.
2007 January-March - Scores are killed or wounded in clashes between security forces and al-Houthi rebels in the north. Rebel leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi accepts a ceasefire in the summer.
2008 September - Al-Qaeda attack on US embassy in Sanaa kills 12 people.
Demands for reform
2008 November - Police fire warning shots at opposition rally in Sanaa. Demonstrators demand electoral reform and fresh polls.
2009 August - The Yemeni army launches a fresh offensive against Houthi rebels in the northern Saada province. Tens of thousands of people are displaced by the fighting.
2010 September - Thousands flee government offensive against separatists in southern Shabwa province.
2011 September - US-born al-Qaeda leader in Yemen, Anwar al-Awlaki, is killed by US forces.
Unity government
2011 November - President Saleh agrees to hand over power to his deputy, Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi, after months of protests. A unity government including prime minister from opposition formed.
2012 February - Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi inaugurated as president after uncontested elections, but is unable to counter al-Qaeda attacks in the capital as the year goes on.
2014 - Presidential panel approves draft federal constitution to accommodate Houthi and southern grievances, but Houthis seize control of most of Sanaa in August and reject the deal.
Foreign intervention
2015 February - Houthis appoint presidential council to replace President Hadi, who flees to his southern stronghold of Aden.
2015 March - Islamic State carries out its first major attacks in Yemen - two suicide bombings targeting Shia mosques in Sanaa, in which 137 people are killed.
Civil war breaks out in earnest as Saudi-led coalition of mainly Gulf Arab states launches air strikes against Houthi targets and imposes naval blockade, in order to halt their advance on Aden.
2015 June - Leader of al-Qaeda in Arabian Peninsula, Nasser al-Wuhayshi, is killed in a US drone strike in Yemen.
2018 January - Southern Yemeni separatists - backed by the United Arab Emirates - seize control of Aden, the main city in the south.
2019 November - Separatists and government sign power-sharing agreement to end conflict in southern Yemen.
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Fractured, inconsistent and dysfunctional. | By Vincent KearneyBBC NI home affairs correspondent
Not the independent verdict any senior manager would wish to read about the organisation he leads.
Especially when they called in the inspectors who reached the conclusions.
Police Ombudsman Al Hutchinson must have developed a thick skin in recent months.
This is the third highly critical report to be published since the BBC revealed in April that the chief executive of the police ombudsman's office had announced his intention to to resign, and delivered withering criticism about the way it functions.
In a letter explaining his decision to quit his £90,000 a year job, Sam Pollock claimed there had been political interference in the work of the office, and a lowering of operational independence between it and the PSNI.
His allegations led to two separate official inquiries.
Rejecting the criticism, Mr Hutchinson asked Dr Michael Maguire of Criminal Justice Inspection (CJI) to investigate the claims about a lowering of independence.
The ombudsman clearly hoped for a different verdict to the one that has been delivered.
This report published on Monday is perhaps the most critical ever to be produced by CJI.
It concludes that there "has been a lowering of the operational independence" of the office in the way it conducts investigations into historical cases.
Indeed, the inspectors say the ombudsman should suspend historical investigations.
'Bombing of McGurk's bar'
Inspectors examined a number of historical cases in which the ombudsman was asked to investigate allegations that the RUC had failed to properly investigate murders during the Troubles.
They included the UVF bombing of McGurk's bar in north Belfast in 1971, in which 15 people died.
The report describes the investigative processes as flawed and says inspectors found that a number of reports - including the one on McGurk's - had been altered before publication to reduce criticism of the police, with no explanation.
"Inspectors could not find any supporting rationale for the changes other than the differing interpretation of sensitive intelligence material," it adds.
" In some cases ....the reasons for changes are unclear even to those conducting the investigation."
The report also notes concerns by some senior staff about the way sensitive intelligence information is handled by the office's Confidential Unit, with some investigators claiming material was withheld.
An internal review of how this sensitive material is handled was conducted by a team consisting entirely of serving police officers from England and Wales, with no input from civilian members of the oversight team.
"Inspectors found there had been no significant consideration of the needs of a civilian oversight body as opposed to the needs of the police or security service," the report states.
As a result of concerns about the handling of intelligence material, inspectors reveal that two very senior members of the ombudsman's staff had asked to be disassociated with some reports.
The senior management team is described as dysfunctional, with "a serious lack of trust between many senior staff and little confidence amongst directors and some investigators in how historic cases are dealt with."
It is all far from the glowing endorsement Mr Hutchinson must have hoped for when he called the inspectors in.
Historical cases account for just 20% of the work conducted by the ombudsman, but they are the most controversial and account for most of the public comment, good and bad, that the office attracts.
"In the context of Northern Ireland, the perception of independence as well as its reality is critical," the inspectors say.
Mr Hutchinson has insisted that his office is fully independent, but this report says otherwise.
This indictment comes just two months after another official report was highly critical of the way the office of the ombudsman functions.
Former senior civil servant Tony McCusker was appointed by Justice Minister David Ford to examine Sam Pollock's claims about political interference.
'Turmoil'
While Mr McCusker said there had been some interference, he concluded that there was no evidence that it was "systemic".
But he painted a picture of an office in turmoil, and said there was a lack of leadership.
Human rights group the Committee on the Administration of Justice has also published a critical report, questioning the office's independence from the police and the Northern Ireland Office.
Mr Hutchinson has faced calls for his resignation, with critics saying his continued presence is damaging public confidence in the office he leads.
The man at the centre of the storm insists he is going nowhere, and that he can address the many problems that have been identified. The question is, will he get the time to deliver?
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R is for run. As in bank run. | By Laurence KnightBusiness reporter, BBC News
If you're wondering what a bank run is, think of Northern Rock. It is a sensitive topic, not least here at the BBC.
But it is a subject that is being increasingly discussed by investors and economists in the eurozone. One can assume it is also being discussed in private by European policymakers too.
Because the fact is that Europe's banks already face what amounts to a slow-motion run by big institutional investors.
They're not queuing up at branches. Instead they are withholding their money at the click of a mouse.
Major US money managers and lenders are pulling out of the eurozone, as is clear from the cost to eurozone banks of borrowing in dollars right now, which has returned to extreme levels last seen during the global financial crisis.
Moreover, data from the European Central Bank (ECB) suggest that Europe's banks themselves are losing confidence in each other - though not yet quite as badly as in 2008.
They have increasingly been putting their cash in the safe hands of the central bank, rather than lending it to each other, despite the punitively low interest rate the ECB pays them.
Lessons learned
To be clear, there is no immediate risk of banks running out of cash.
Greece is at the forefront of the crisis: Deposits at the country's banks have fallen 21% since January 2010, according to Greek central bank data.
But the Greek banks have been on ECB life support for over a year now, and they have duly paid out every cent that has been demanded from them.
They borrow the money from the central bank by providing Greek government bonds (ie loans they have made to their government) as collateral - just as you would offer your house as collateral to take out a mortgage.
And the ECB has continued to provide cash to the Greek banks even as that collateral has become increasingly worthless - leaving the ECB exposed to big losses if Greece stops repaying its debts.
As Greece's credit rating has been cut and cut by the big three ratings agencies, so the ECB has lowered and lowered the minimum standard of collateral it is willing to accept, because it is determined to keep the Greek banks alive.
The ECB has learned the lesson of 2008 - which is that if one big financial institution is allowed to fail, then panicky lenders will pull the rug from under the entire financial system.
Indeed, before the global financial crisis, Western governments thought that such panics had been laid to rest decades ago.
After the bank runs of the 1930s, US and European governments instituted two important changes to make sure they were never repeated.
Firstly, the central bank agreed to act as "lender of last resort". That meant that - so long as a bank was fundamentally sound - the central bank would always lend it cash to stave off a panic, just as the ECB is doing now.
Secondly, the bank accounts of ordinary depositors like you or me were guaranteed by the banks' respective governments. So that even if a bank goes bust, ordinary folk do not need to worry about losing their savings.
That formal guarantee currently amounts to 100,000 euros (£86,000; $133,000) in eurozone countries.
What governments did not do was to guarantee the multi-million deposits of institutions such as money managers, big companies or other banks. These investors were supposed to be sophisticated enough to bear their own risk.
But by 2008, banks had become so dependent on the money they got from these large depositors (and they still are), that governments in effect had to extend their guarantee to cover these investors too, or else face another 1930s-style financial meltdown and depression.
Incredible guarantees
That's why the ECB is currently pulling out all the stops to keep Europe's banks afloat.
And it's also why Europe's governments have promised to pour even more money into recapitalising their banks - which basically means taxpayers will provide a buffer to absorb the banks' losses.
But, if their money is effectively guaranteed these days, why are the big institutional depositors in the eurozone's banks still losing their nerve?
The reason, it appears, is that they no longer fully believe in the guarantee.
Greece is the most extreme example.
It is widely accepted that the country will never repay its debts. The only question is whether it will negotiate a write-off of much of its debts by its lenders, or just thumb its nose and stop repaying them.
But if Greece cannot pay its debts, how much is its guarantee of the Greek banks worth?
What's more, Greece's biggest lenders are - unsurprisingly - none other than the Greek banks themselves.
So even if Greece manages to agree a significant write-off of its debts, it will then have to bail out the biggest losers - its own banks. In effect, it would be stealing money from its own pocket.
Nonetheless, if the Greek banks really did go belly-up, would the Greek government let the savings of its own citizens be wiped out?
Almost certainly not. As the case of the UK's Northern Rock amply demonstrated, governments will always put the money of their own voters first.
Which means that all the burden of loss would fall on the banks' other lenders - which is one of the things that is making those other lenders so nervous.
Playing Argentina?
There is, of course, an alternative scenario. Greece could leave the euro - a possibility openly discussed by eurozone leaders these days.
On the plus side, Greece's debts would be converted into drachmas, meaning the government could rely on the newly independent Greek central bank to print all the cash it needs to repay them - although if it actually did this, it would probably cause massive inflation.
The deposits at Greek banks would also be converted into drachmas. So there should be no question of the government honouring its guarantee of people's bank accounts in drachmas.
But here is the big problem. Who on earth would want their savings to be converted into a new currency that would then very likely lose much of its value against the euro?
The large institutional depositors at Greece's banks certainly wouldn't.
Which raises the question, if people start to think that a Greek exit from the euro is inevitable, would ordinary Greeks also start to exercise their right to convert their deposits into euro cash, or - more prudently - to transfer their deposits to a newly-opened account in Germany?
And this is where it gets nasty.
Because big investors fear that, in a worst-case scenario, Greece might decide to "do an Argentina" - that is, to stop paying its debts, unhitch and devalue its currency, and blow a raspberry at the rest of the world, like Argentina did in 2001-02.
In which case the government may have a perverse incentive to permit a run on its own banks.
Why? Because when a Greek closes his or her account in Athens, their bank turns to the Greek central bank for the money.
Then, depending on the depositor's request, the Greek central bank either prints the banknotes needed, or - through the system of central banks inside the eurozone - borrows the money from the Bundesbank, Germany's central bank.
Either way, as depositors' money flows out of Greece's banks, the Greek central bank ends up becoming more and more indebted to the European Central Bank.
And if the Greek government has secretly decided to renege on its debts, then why not let its citizens do what they must to preserve the value of their savings ahead of the big announcement?
Speaking volumes
What does all this mean for the much bigger eurozone economies - Italy, Spain, France and even Germany?
Greece is small, and the losses to the rest of Europe from a Greek implosion may be manageable. What may not be manageable is the precedent it would set.
First of all, many other eurozone economies share characteristics with Greece. They have too much debt (considering government and private sector debt together), and in the case of southern Europe, their economies are fundamentally uncompetitive.
That means they face little prospect of the strong economic recovery that may be needed to make their debts repayable. Indeed, the current financial crisis appears to be plunging Europe back into recession.
Secondly, Europe's banks may not be too-big-to-fail, so much as too-big-to-rescue. This is the big concern hanging over France - can the country actually afford to prop up the French banks that have lent so much to Italy and Spain?
Thirdly, a failure in Greece will speak volumes about the lack of political will to solve the eurozone's problems.
Germany has refused to put more of its taxpayers' money on the line to prop up fellow eurozone governments, somehow imagining that China would be willing to do this instead.
The Germans fear that if they go easy on southern Europe, it will just encourage more profligacy, and they will be left carrying the can.
For similar reasons, the ECB - under the Bundesbank's influence - has likewise refused to print the trillions of euros needed to bail out Europe's struggling governments.
It has also refused to even consider tolerating a higher inflation rate - something that many economists warn will be needed to make Europe's debts repayable, and to help southern European workers regain a competitive edge.
Lastly, and most worryingly, is that panic is highly infectious. Once depositor bank runs start in one place, they have a worrying tendency to spread quickly to other places.
That was the biggest lesson of the 1930s bank runs, and one that the world thought it had learned.
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The images are murky at first. | By Justin RowlattChief Environment correspondent
Sediment sweeps past the camera as Icefin, a bright yellow remotely operated robot submarine, moves tentatively forward under the ice.
Then the waters begin to clear.
Icefin is under almost half a mile (600m) of ice, at the front of one the fastest-changing large glaciers in the world.
Suddenly a shadow looms above, an overhanging cliff of dirt-encrusted ice.
It doesn't look like much, but this is a unique image - the first ever pictures from a frontier that is changing our world.
Icefin has reached the point at which the warm ocean water meets the wall of ice at the front of the mighty Thwaites glacier - the point where this vast body of ice begins to melt.
The 'doomsday' glacier
Glaciologists have described Thwaites as the "most important" glacier in the world, the "riskiest" glacier, even the "doomsday" glacier.
It is massive - roughly the size of Britain.
It already accounts for 4% of world sea level rise each year - a huge figure for a single glacier - and satellite data show that it is melting increasingly rapidly.
There is enough water locked up in it to raise world sea level by more than half a metre.
And Thwaites sits like a keystone right in the centre of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet - a vast basin of ice that contains more than 3m of additional potential sea level rise.
Yet, until this year, no-one has attempted a large-scale scientific survey on the glacier.
The Icefin team, along with 40 or so other scientists, are part of the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration, a five-year, $50m (£38m) joint UK-US effort to understand why it is changing so rapidly.
The project represents the biggest and most complex scientific field programme in Antarctic history.
You may be surprised that so little is known about such an important glacier - I certainly was when I was invited to cover the work of the team.
I quickly discover why as I try to get there myself.
Snow on the ice runway delays my flight from New Zealand to McMurdo, the main US research station in Antarctica.
This is the first of a whole catalogue of delays and disruptions.
It takes the science teams weeks just to get to their field camps.
At one stage, the entire season's research is on the point of being cancelled because storms stop all flights to West Antarctica from McMurdo for 17 consecutive days.
Why is Thwaites important?
West Antarctica is the stormiest part of the world's stormiest continent.
And Thwaites is remote even by Antarctic standards, more than 1,000 miles (1,600km) from the nearest research station.
Only four people have ever been on the front of the glacier before and they were the advance party for this year's work.
But understanding what is happening here is essential for scientists to be able to predict future sea level rise accurately.
The ice in Antarctica holds 90% of the world's fresh water, and 80% of that ice is in the eastern part of the continent.
The ice in East Antarctica is thick - more than a mile thick on average - but it rests on high ground and only creeps sluggishly to the sea.
Some of it has been around for millions of years.
Western Antarctica, however, is very different. It is smaller but still huge, and is much more vulnerable to change.
Unlike the east it doesn't rest on high ground. In fact, virtually the whole bed is way below sea level. If it weren't for the ice, it would be deep ocean with a few islands.
I've been in Antarctica five weeks before I finally board the red British Antarctic Survey Twin Otter that takes me to the front of the glacier.
I will be camping with the team at what is known as the grounding zone.
They are camped on the ice above the point where the glacier meets the ocean water, and have the most ambitious task of all.
They want to drill down through almost half a mile of ice right at the point where the glacier goes afloat.
No-one has ever done that on a glacier this big and dynamic.
They will use the hole to get access to the sea water that is melting the glacier to find out where it is from and why it is attacking the glacier so vigorously.
They do not have long.
All the delays mean there are just a few weeks of the Antarctic summer left before the weather starts to get really bad.
As the members of the drilling team set up their equipment, I help out with a seismic survey of the bed beneath the glacier.
Dr Kiya Riverman, a glaciologist at the University of Oregon, drills down with an ice auger - a large spiral stainless-steel drill bit - and sets small explosive charges.
The rest of us dig holes in the ice for the "georods" and "geophones" - the electronic ears that listen to the echo of the blast that bounces back from the bedrock through the layers of water and ice.
The reason the scientists are so worried about Thwaites is because of that downward sloping submarine bed.
It means the glacier gets thicker and thicker as you go inland.
At its deepest point, the base of the glacier is more than a mile below sea level and there is another mile of ice on top of that.
What appears to be happening is that deep warm ocean water is flowing to the coast and down to the ice front, melting the glacier.
As the glacier retreats back, yet more ice is exposed.
It is a bit like cutting slices from the sharp end of a wedge of cheese.
The surface area of each one gets bigger and bigger - providing ever more ice for the water to melt.
And that is not the only effect.
Gravity means ice wants to be flat. As the front of the glacier melts, the weight of the vast reservoir of ice behind it pushes forward.
It wants to "smoosh out," explains Dr Riverman. The higher the ice cliff, she says, the more "smooshing" the glacier wants to do.
So, the more the glacier melts, the more quickly the ice in it is likely to flow.
"The fear is these processes will just accelerate," she says. "It is a feedback loop, a vicious cycle."
Doing science of this scale in such an extreme environment is not just about flying a few scientists to a remote location.
They need tonnes of specialist equipment and tens of thousands of litres of fuel, as well as tents and other camping supplies and food.
I camped on the ice for a month, some of the scientists will be out there for far longer, two months or more.
It took more than a dozen flights by the US Antarctic programme's fleet of huge ski-equipped Hercules cargo planes just to get the scientists and some of their cargo to the project's main staging post in the middle of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.
Then smaller planes - an elderly Dakota and a couple of Twin Otters - ferried the people and supplies on to the field camps, hundreds of miles down the glacier towards the sea.
The distances are so great they needed to set up another camp halfway down the glacier so the planes could refuel.
The British Antarctic Survey's contribution was an epic overland journey that brought in hundreds of tonnes of fuel and cargo.
Two ice-hardened ships docked alongside an ice cliff at the foot of the Antarctic Peninsula during the last Antarctic summer.
A team of drivers in specialist snow vehicles then dragged it more than a thousand miles across the ice sheet through some of the most inhospitable terrain and weather on earth.
It was tough going, the top speed was just 10mph.
Drilling through the ice
The scientists at the grounding zone camp plan to use hot water to drill their hole through the ice.
They need 10,000 litres of water, which means melting 10 tonnes of snow.
Everyone sets to work with spades, hefting snow into the "flubber" - a rubber container the size of a small swimming pool.
"It'll be the most southerly jacuzzi in the world," jokes Paul Anker, a British Antarctic Survey drilling engineer.
The principle is simple - you heat the water with a bank of boilers to just below boiling point and then spray it onto the ice, melting your way down.
But drilling a 30cm hole through almost half a mile of ice at the front of the most remote glacier in the world is not easy.
The ice is about -25C (-13F) so the hole is liable to freeze over and the whole process is dependent on the vagaries of the weather.
By early January, the flubber is full and all the equipment is ready but then we get a warning that yet another storm is on its way.
Antarctic storms can be very intense. It is not unusual to have hurricane force winds as well as very low temperatures.
This one is relatively mild for Antarctica but still involves three days of wind gusting up to 50mph. It blows huge drifts of snow into the camp, swamping the equipment, and all the work stops.
We sit in the mess tent playing cards and drinking tea and the scientists discuss why the glacier is retreating so rapidly.
They say what is happening here is down to the complex interplay of climate, weather and ocean currents.
The key is the warm seawater, which originates on the other side of the world.
As the Gulf Stream cools between Greenland and Iceland, the water sinks.
This water is salty, which makes it relatively heavy, but is still a degree or two above freezing.
This heavy salty water is carried by a deep ocean current called the Atlantic conveyor all the way down to the south Atlantic.
Shifting winds
Here it becomes part of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, flowing deep - a third of a mile (530m) - below a layer of much colder water.
The surface water in Antarctica is very cold, just above -2C degrees, the freezing point of salt water.
The deep warm circumpolar water travels all the way around the continent but has been increasingly encroaching on the icy edge of West Antarctica.
This is where our changing climate comes in.
The scientists say the Pacific Ocean is warming up and that is shifting wind patterns off the coast of West Antarctica, allowing the warm deep water to well up over the continental shelf.
"The deep Antarctic circumpolar water is only a handful of degrees warmer than the water above it - a degree or two above 0C - but that's warm enough to light this glacier up," says David Holland, an oceanographer with New York University and one of the lead scientists at the grounding zone camp.
I was supposed to leave Antarctica at the end of December but all the delays mean the drilling only begins on 7 January.
That is when the satellite phone call comes from the United States Antarctic Program HQ in McMurdo.
We are told we cannot delay our flights off the continent any longer and must leave on the supply plane that is due to arrive at the camp in an hour or so.
It is very frustrating to be forced to leave before the hole is finished and the instruments have been deployed, especially given how long it took to get here.
We say our goodbyes and board the plane.
I look back and see the wheel at the top of the drill turning, the black hose spooling out steadily.
They are almost half way down through the ice.
The plane flies up over the camp and directly north, out towards the ocean.
The scientists had told me that we had been camped on what is basically a small bay of ice protected by a horseshoe of raised ground.
As we fly out over the front of the glacier, I realise with a shock just how fragile a fingerhold it is.
There is no mistaking the epic forces at work here, slowly tearing, ripping and shattering the ice.
In some places the great sheet of ice has broken up completely, collapsing into a jumble of massive icebergs which float in drunken chaos.
Elsewhere, there are cliffs of ice, some of which rise up almost a mile from the sea bed.
The front of the glacier is almost 100 miles wide (160km) and is collapsing into the sea at up to two miles (3km) a year.
The scale is staggering and explains why Thwaites is already such an important component of world sea level rise, but I am shocked to discover there is another process that could accelerate its retreat even more.
Melt rates are increasing
Most glaciers that flow into the sea have what is known as an "ice pump".
Sea water is salty and dense which makes it heavy. Melt water is fresh and therefore relatively light.
As the glacier melts, the fresh water therefore tends to flow upwards, drawing up the heavier warmer sea water behind it.
When the sea water is cold, this process is very slow, the ice pump usually just melts a few dozen centimetres a year - easily balanced by the new ice created by falling snow.
But warm water transforms the process, according to the scientists.
Evidence from other glaciers shows that if you increase the amount of warm water that is reaching the glacier the ice pump works much faster.
"It can set glaciers on fire," says Prof Holland, "increasing melt rates by as much as a hundred-fold."
The small plane takes us to the camp in the middle of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet but more bad weather means more delays and it is nine days before a Hercules comes to take us back to McMurdo.
By then we have been joined by some of the scientists.
It has been a very successful season.
They have confirmed that the deep circumpolar warm water is getting under the glacier and have collected huge amounts of data.
Icefin, the robot submarine, has managed to make five missions, taking a host of measurements in the water beneath the glacier and recording some extraordinary images.
It will take years to process all the information the team has gathered and incorporate the findings into the models that are used to project future sea level rise.
Rising sea levels
Thwaites is not going to vanish overnight - the scientists say it will take decades, possibly more than a century.
But that should not make us complacent.
A metre of sea level rise may not sound much, particularly when you consider that in some places the tide can rise and fall by three or four metres every day.
But sea level has a huge effect on the severity of storm surges, says Prof David Vaughan, the director of science at the British Antarctic Survey.
Take London.
An increase in sea level of 50cm would mean the storm that used to come every thousand years will now come every 100 years.
If you increase that to a metre then that millennial storm is likely to come once a decade.
"When you think about it, we shouldn't be surprised by any of this," says Prof Vaughan as we are preparing to board the plane that will take us back to New Zealand and then home.
Ever-increasing carbon dioxide levels are putting a lot more heat into the atmosphere and the oceans.
Heat is energy, and energy drives the weather and ocean currents.
Increase the amount of energy in the system, he says, and inevitably big global processes are going to change.
"They already have in the Arctic," says Prof Vaughan with a sigh. "What we are seeing here in the Antarctic is just another huge system responding in its own way."
Research and graphics by Alison Trowsdale, Becky Dale Lilly Huynh, Irene de la Torre. Photographs by Jemma Cox and David Vaughan.
Additional research provided by Professor Andrew Shepherd, Leeds University.
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A chronology of key events:
| 1820 - Britain and local rulers sign a treaty to combat piracy along the Gulf coast. From this, and later agreements, the area becomes known as the Trucial Coast.
1892 - Deal between the Trucial States and Britain gives Britain control over foreign affairs and each emirate control over internal affairs.
1948 - Sheikh Saqr Bin-Muhammad al-Qasimi becomes Ruler of Ras al-Khaymah.
1950s - Oil is discovered.
1952 - The seven emirates form a Trucial Council.
1962 - Oil is exported for the first time from Abu Dhabi.
1966 August - Sheikh Zayed Bin-Sultan Al Nuhayyan takes over as Ruler of Abu Dhabi.
1968 - As independence looms, Bahrain and Qatar join the Trucial States. Differences cause the union to crumble in 1971.
1971 November - Iran occupies the islands of Greater and Lesser Tunb and Abu Musa.
Federation formed
1971 December - After independence from Britain, Abu Dhabi, Ajman, Dubai, Fujayrah, Sharjah, and Umm al-Qaywayn come together as the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Sheikh Zayed Bin-Sultan Al Nuhayyan presides over the federation.
1971 - UAE joins the Arab League.
1972 - Ras al-Khaymah joins the federation.
1972 January - Sheikh Sultan Bin-Muhammad al-Qasimi becomes Ruler of Sharjah.
1972 February - Federal National Council (FNC) is created; it is a 40 member consultative body appointed by the seven rulers.
1974 September - Sheikh Hamad Bin-Muhammad Bin-Hamad al-Sharqi becomes Ruler of Fujayrah.
1981 February - Sheikh Rashid Bin-Ahmad al-Mualla becomes Ruler of Umm al-Qaywayn.
1981 May - UAE is a founding member of the Gulf Cooperation Council; its first summit is held in Abu Dhabi.
1981 September - Sheikh Humayd Bin-Rashid al-Nuaymi becomes Ruler of Ajman.
1986 October - Sheikh Zayed Bin-Sultan Al Nuhayyan is re-elected as UAE president - his fourth term.
Coup attempt
1987 June - Attempted coup in Sharjah. Sheikh Sultan Bin-Muhammad al-Qasimi abdicates in favour of his brother after admitting financial mismanagement but is reinstated by the Supreme Council of Rulers.
1990 October - Sheikh Rashid Bin-Said Al Maktum dies and is succeeded by his son Sheikh Maktum Bin-Rashid Al Maktum as ruler of Dubai and UAE vice-president.
1991 - UAE forces join the allies against Iraq after the invasion of Kuwait.
1991 July - Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) collapses. Abu Dhabi's ruling family owns a 77.4% share.
1992 Iran angers the UAE by saying visitors to Abu Musa and Greater and Lesser Tunb must have Iranian visas.
1993 December - Abu Dhabi sues BCCI's executives for damages.
1994 June - 11 of the 12 former BCCI executives accused of fraud are given jail sentences and ordered to pay compensation.
Islands disputed
1996 - Iran fuels the dispute over Abu Musa and Greater and Lesser Tunb by building an airport on Abu Musa and a power station on Greater Tunb.
1996 June - Two BCCI executives are cleared of fraud charges on appeal.
1998 - UAE restores diplomatic relations with Iraq; they were severed at the outbreak of the 1991 Gulf War.
1999 November - Gulf Cooperation Council backs the UAE in its dispute with Iran over Greater and Lesser Tunb and Abu Musa .
2001 June - President Sheikh Zayed pardons 6,000 prisoners.
2001 November - Government orders banks to freeze the assets of 62 organisations and individuals suspected by the US of funding terrorism.
2004 November - UAE President Sheikh Zayed Bin-Sultan Al Nahyan dies and is succeeded by his son, Sheikh Khalifa.
2005 December - Sheikh Khalifa announces plans for the UAE's first elections. Half of the members of the consultative Federal National Council will be elected by a limited number of citizens.
2006 January - Sheikh Maktoum bin Rashid al-Maktoum, UAE PM and vice-president and ruler of Dubai, dies during a visit to Australia. He is succeeded by his brother, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum.
2006 March - Political storm in the US forces state-owned Dubai Ports World to relinquish control of terminals at six major American ports. Critics of the ports deal feared an increased risk of terrorist attack, saying the UAE was home to two of the 9/11 hijackers.
2006 March-June - Economic changes announced. They include bringing the days of the official weekend into line with Western nations, introducing laws to reduce the dependence on foreign workers and allowing labourers to form trade unions.
2006 16 December - First-ever national elections. A small number of hand-picked voters choose half of the members of the Federal National Council - an advisory body.
2007 April - UAE unveils a national development strategy aimed at making it a world leader.
2007 September - Dubai and Qatar become the two biggest shareholders of the London Stock Exchange, the world's third largest stock exchange.
2008 January - France and the UAE sign a deal allowing France to set up a permanent military base in the UAE's largest emirate, Abu Dhabi.
2008 July - The UAE cancels the entire debt owed to it by Iraq - a sum of almost $7bn.
Boom grinds to halt
2009 February - Dubai sold $10bn in bonds to the UAE in order to ease liquidity problems.
2009 March - Sulim Yamadayev, a rival of Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, dies after an apparent assassination in Dubai.
2009 May - The UAE withdraws from plans for Gulf monetary union, dealing a blow to further economic integration in the region.
2009 November/December - Government-owned investment arm Dubai World requests a moratorium on debt repayments, prompting fears it might default on billions of dollars of debt held abroad. Abu Dhabi gives Dubai a $10bn handout - $4.1bn to bail out Dubai World.
2010 January - Burj Khalifa tower opens in Dubai as the world's tallest building and man-made structure.
Palestinian militant leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh is killed in a Dubai hotel, in a hit widely blamed on Israel.
2011 March - UAE joins international military operation in Libya.
2011 April - Five activists who signed an online petition calling for reforms are imprisoned. They are pardoned and released in November.
2012 April - The UAE recalls its ambassador to Iran after the Iranian president visits a Gulf island, Abu Musa, claimed by both countries.
A member of the ruling family in Ras al-Khaimah is put under house arrest after calling for political openness.
2012 July - The UAE begins operating a key overland oil pipeline which bypasses the Strait of Hormuz. Iran has repeatedly threatened to close the strait at the mouth of the Gulf, a vital oil-trade route.
2012 November - Mindful of protests in nearby Bahrain, the UAE outlaws online mockery of its own government or attempts to organise public protests through social media. Since March it has detained more that 60 activists without charge - some of them supporters of the Islah Islamic group, which is aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood elsewhere in Arab countries.
2013 July - Sixty eight alleged members of Al-Islah are jailed on charges of planning to overthrow the government.
2013 November - Trial in UAE of Egyptians and Emiratis accused of starting a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is outlawed in the Gulf state.
2014 January - Sheikh Kalifa, president of the UAE Federal Council and Abu Dhabi's ruler, undergoes surgery after suffering a stroke.
2014 March - Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain withdraw their ambassadors to Qatar in protest at what they say is its interference in their internal affairs.
2014 July - The UAE announces plans to send an unmanned spacecraft to Mars in what would be the first space probe by an Arab or Islamic country.
2014 August - UAE intervenes in Libya, targetting Islamist militants with air strikes, US officials report.
2014 September - The UAE and four other Arab states take part in US-led air strikes on Islamic State militants in Syria.
2014 November - Amnesty International accuses UAE of carrying out an unprecedented clampdown on dissent since 2011.
UAE publishes its list ''terrorist organisations'', including dozens of Islamist groups and charities.
2014 March - The UAE, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain temporarily withdraw their ambassadors from Qatar after alleging that it has been meddling in their internal affairs.
2015 March - The UAE and four other GCC states take part in Saudi-led air strikes on Houthi rebels in Yemen.
2020 August - The UAE establishes diplomatic relations with Israel.
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Sometimes black and white is just so 2014. | The organisers of the recent pride event in the town of Totnes in south Devon certainly think so.
After the success of having a temporary rainbow-coloured zebra crossing painted on the road last year, the town looks set to make it permanent.
Campaigner Mat Price has told Newsbeat that the colours are a symbol of pride for LGBT (Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) communities.
He founded Proud2be, a local LGBT organisation in south Devon.
"The proposal has been approved by the town council, to give to Devon County Council for their approval," he says.
"What we are looking for is a legitimate zebra crossing on a key walking route where an additional crossing point would improve safety.
"It would act as a zebra crossing but be rainbow coloured."
If you think that sounds unusual you'd be right.
Tel Aviv, Sydney, Utrecht, Oslo, Stockholm, Brighton and London have all had temporary rainbow zebra crossings but they were all removed.
There are permanent ones in Vancouver and West Hollywood.
"For us it's about raising awareness in a rural area of the country like Devon, but to also send out a message to not just Totnes but the world, that Totnes embraces and celebrates diversity.
"It also stands with LGBT people all around the world who are facing discrimination and injustice."
The idea has a lot of support from local politicians as well.
"I think it would just be a case for them (Devon County Council) deciding if it's a legitimate proposal and if it's going to be safe, so we'll be in discussions about that.
"The majority of responses we're getting, are overwhelmingly supportive, and I'm really, really hopeful we'll get support."
While the south-west of England isn't well known for its large gay communities, Mat says he feels the rainbow crossing could become a beacon.
"We've put on pride events and we get a thousand people turning up each year.
"There is quite a large community [but] quite often they are hidden."
Follow @BBCNewsbeat on Twitter and Radio1Newsbeat on YouTube
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The book is dead, long live the book. | By Padraig Belton and Matthew WallTechnology of Business
Digital technology has certainly had a profound effect on the traditional book publishing and retailing industries, but has it also given the book a new lease of life?
At one point it looked as if the rise of e-books at knock-down prices and e-readers like Amazon's Kindle and Barnes & Noble's Nook posed an existential threat to book publishers and sellers.
"Literature found itself at war with the internet," as Jim Hinks, digital editor of Comma Press, succinctly puts it.
But contrary to expectations, the printed book is still surviving alongside its upstart e-book cousin, and technology is helping publishers and retailers reach new audiences and find new ways to tell stories.
Print fights back?
While there can be no denying that printed book sales have taken a massive hit with the rise of digital, there is some evidence that the rate of decline is slowing and that the excitement over e-readers is subsiding.
Kindle sales - peaking at 13.44 million in 2011 - fell back to 9.7 million in 2012 and have plateaued since. Barnes & Noble's Nook e-reader has been losing about $70m (£45m) a year and the US bookseller has been trying - and failing - to find a buyer for the division.
The rise of the e-book
30%
share of UK book purchases
47% share of adult fiction
£393m spent on e-books
£1.7bn amount spent on print books
In the UK, roughly £1.7bn was spent on print books last year, compared with £393m on e-books, says Nielsen Book Research's Scott Morton. The digital newcomers' share of the market seems to have settled at about 30%.
On the high street, Waterstones saw physical book sales grow 5% over the Christmas period compared with the year before, while Foyles saw sales rise 8.1%.
The era of the printed book, it would seem, is far from over. But a lot depends on the sector you're looking at.
Adult fiction - particularly romantic and erotic - has migrated strongly to the e-book, whereas cookery and religious books still do well in print, as do books with illustrations. All for fairly obvious reasons.
Does format matter?
There are plenty of services out there trying to bridge the gap between the physical and the digital, extending the definition of what a book is.
In 2014, a personalised publishing experiment won the largest equity deal ever on the BBC Dragons' Den TV programme.
The Little Girl Who Lost Her Name - a printed book that could be digitally individualised to include the name of the child reading it - went on to be the top-selling children's picture book in Britain and Australia.
Spanish company SeeBook offers e-books as physical cards that can be bought online or in bookshops like other gift cards. Simply scan the QR code in the card with your smartphone or tablet to download the book.
"Some book stores still see digital as the big monster that's going to eat them, and prefer to put their head into the sand," says SeeBook director Dr Rosa Sala Rose.
London-based tech start-up Bookindy is using technology to encourage people back to struggling local bookshops.
It does this with a Chrome browser plug-in - each time you search Amazon for a book, a window pops up saying how much it would cost at your nearest independent bookseller.
Founder William Cookson, who describes himself as "just an average sort of book reader", says his creation took just three days to code.
It helped that he could tap in to an existing network of 350 independent British bookshops called Hive, which enables retailers to check stock and fulfil orders.
Serial revival
Digital is also reviving some centuries-old publishing ideas, says Anna Rafferty, until recently head of Penguin Books Digital.
Just as Charles Dickens' The Pickwick Papers was published in instalments in 1836, so Serial, a prizewinning US murder story, was podcast last year in 12 episodes, to great acclaim.
"Digital technology and the rise in the digital reading culture has allowed authors and publishers many more new creative opportunities to develop 'the book' further and delight readers," she says.
"It also allows authors to publish directly, to connect intimately with their readers and, crucially, to create new ways of telling their stories."
The Pigeonhole - launched in October by former Random House employee Anna Jean Hughes and partner Jacob Cockcroft - serialises books and enables readers to share comments and interact with the authors, all via an app. It's like a digital book club.
In a similar vein, Manchester-based MacGuffin from Comma Press acts like a Spotify for books - you can hear authors reading their stories out loud. Its analytics reveal what gets read where, and at what point people lose interest.
Readers can append tags to a story - "sci fi", "dystopian", or "feminist", for example - and use these to discover other new fiction, much in the same way someone might browse through a physical bookshop.
Digital distraction
Competition from mobile devices is one reason for Kindle sales levelling off.
"With mobile phones, screens are so much bigger, and the experience not as garish as it used to be," says Mr Hinks.
But although smartphones are convenient - you can buy and download a book in seconds - they can also be very distracting, posing an added challenge to e-book sellers.
Books on electronic devices "compete with games, news, and social media, and so need to be slicker," says Laura Summers, co-founder of BookMachine, a popular publishing networking website.
To hook people into reading, another start-up, Rook, is offering access to free e-books at wi-fi hotspots, such as London Underground stations, participating coffee shops and retailers.
"By the time they have to leave and go off about their life", says co-founder Curtis Moran, "they'll be so hooked into the book they're going to have to buy it."
He compares his start-up to a traditional bookshop, where you can sit and read for as long as you wish, but have to pay if you want to take the book with you.
So the book isn't dead; technology is simply helping it evolve beyond its physical confines.
Long live the book.
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The view of Labour members seems clear. | By Iain WatsonPolitical correspondent, BBC News
Polling for a project on party membership - led by Prof Tim Bale of Queen Mary University - was published at the turn of the year.
It suggested more than 70% of Labour's members backed a second referendum.
And if it were held, nearly nine out of 10 would vote to remain in the EU.
But this wasn't a poll of shadow cabinet members.
Nine of Jeremy Corbyn's top team are very, very sceptical of - or opposed to - another referendum.
And most of these are his political allies.
Public vote, private fears
The man he installed as Labour Party chairman - Ian Lavery - is reported to have offered his resignation twice because he broke the party whip and failed to back a referendum in the recent indicative votes. Twice Mr Corbyn refused to accept it.
From a Leave-supporting area in north east England, Mr Lavery is convinced Labour would pay a high political price if it is seen to be disrespecting the result of the 2016 referendum.
It's interesting that the elections co-ordinator, Andrew Gwynne, who is not as close to Mr Corbyn, takes a similar view.
So far, a formulation around the question of a second referendum has just about maintained a show of unity from senior figures in public - though this is now fraying.
The form of words deployed is that Labour would support a "public vote" in order to avoid "a hard Tory Brexit" or "no deal".
But these caveats now worry supporters of a referendum in the party - including some who sit at Mr Corbyn's top table.
The fears are fuelled by the current cross-party talks.
Because if Mr Corbyn was to reach a deal with Theresa May which avoids "a hard Tory Brexit", would the referendum commitment melt away?
Shadow boxing
Shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry was so concerned she wrote to shadow cabinet colleagues last night to argue that ditching a public vote on any deal - including one hammered out with the prime minister - would breach party policy and would require a vote of the whole shadow cabinet.
At last night's special meeting of shadow ministers, I am told Ms Thornberry's possible leadership ambitions were aired. (She couldn't be there for family reasons).
Key figures in Mr Corbyn's office were furious at her intervention.
But the party's deputy leader Tom Watson - who doesn't always see eye to eye with the shadow foreign secretary - took to the airwaves to insist: "Our position is we want a confirmatory ballot.
"It's very difficult for us to move off that because I don't think our party would forgive us if we signed off on Tory Brexit without that kind of concession."
Even more uncomfortably for the Labour leader, left-wing allies have written to him to push for a referendum commitment in talks with the prime minister.
The eleven signatories include shadow ministers Clive Lewis and Rachael Maskell.
They wrote: "We - your supporters - urge you to make a confirmatory public vote your bottom line in negotiations with Theresa May and to fight to bring this government down."
Mr Corbyn has said he did raise the "option" of a public vote with Mrs May yesterday and shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer said today that a "confirmatory vote" would be discussed at what are being billed as technical discussions between Labour and Conservative frontbenchers.
Meaningful policy?
Behind the scenes there is what to outsiders will look like a "dance on the head of a pin" argument going on as to what Labour's policy actually is on a public vote - but the interpretation could determine how hard, or otherwise, the referendum is pushed in talks.
The motion agreed last autumn at Labour's conference says "should Parliament vote down a Tory Brexit deal, or the talks end in no deal" then there should be a general election.
If that doesn't happen, then "Labour must support all options remaining on the table, including campaigning for a public vote".
Supporters of a referendum say that Mrs May's "Tory Brexit deal" - as represented by two meaningful votes - has been voted down.
So Labour should now be calling unequivocally for a "public vote" on any deal.
Sceptics and opponents stress, on the other hand, that it should still be a last resort to prevent no deal, or another attempt to get Mrs May's unrevised deal over the line.
Divided we stand
So a group of 25 Labour MPs from Leave areas has written to Mr Corbyn urging him to "compromise" in talks with Mrs May.
The group includes the shadow minister Gloria De Piero, and former shadow minister Melanie Onn, who resigned because she voted against the referendum option rather than abstain on an indicative vote.
More familiar supporters of Mrs May's current deal - such as Caroline Flint and Sir Kevin Barron - have added their names too - as has Lisa Nandy, the former frontbencher who has so far held out against the prime minister's deal, but who could be persuaded if it were combined with a customs union.
The signatories say: "Our policy… seeks a deal that protects jobs and rights at work. It does not require a confirmatory ballot on any deal that meets those conditions."
The political hook
But sources close to the Labour leader think the fuss over a referendum is over-blown, as government and opposition are unlikely to agree a joint motion on Brexit in any case.
It's far more likely there will be a series of votes on a range of options - including a referendum - next week.
Peter Kyle, who drafted a motion on the option of a referendum during the phase of indicative votes, is hopeful of success.
His formulation garnered more votes - though not a majority - from MPs than any other option.
But some close to the Labour leadership believe it will, once again, be rejected.
That outcome would get both the prime minister and the opposition leader off a potentially painful political hook.
But it doesn't bring a Brexit deal any closer.
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Welcome to Jackson Hole, Wyoming. | By Jimmy BlakeNewsbeat entertainment reporter
The tourist guide describes it as "a place where you can go days without seeing another soul... filled with wildlife, wild folks and even a guy called wild Bill."
Well Bill just got some new mates.
Because last night, Kanye West invited a host of hip-hip royalty (and a few Kardashians) to the "mountain town unlike anything else" to listen Kanye's new album YE. The rest of us picked it apart via live stream.
Why Wyoming?
Kanye is known for being secretive with new music and not having traditional first plays.
Ahead of the release of 2007 Graduation, he carried a laptop containing the only-known copies of the songs into the BBC by hand to make sure nobody else could hear them.
For his last album, The Life of Pablo, he held a fashion show in New York's Madison Square Garden which was streamed to cinemas around the world.
With that in mind, a chalet in a remote ski resort was the ideal place to work on the follow-up.
Well, until everyone rumoured to be involved in YE started posting pictures of themselves in salopettes...
Kid Cudi and Nas who has new Kanye-produced album coming this year were among the first to arrive...
Then Travis Scott rocked up...
Rappers The Dream and King Louie popped by too. They even tagged the location.
With it being the base for the album, it made sense to have it's first play in Wyoming.
Who was there?
After two and a half hours of a holding screen featuring a roaring fire, the live stream revealed a couple of hundred people huddled around campfires toasting marshmallows.
Pusha T, Nas, Fabulous, Big Sean and Jonah Hill (yes, the actor) were all in the crowd.
BBC Radio 1Xtra's Semtex and Radio 1's Charlie Sloth was also there and found time to top up his Instagram account.
Once the mingling was done, Chris Rock introduced "the latest, the greatest - Kanye West".
The rapper emerged grinning in a luminous yellow jumper and danced through the crowd while YE was played in full, twice... obviously.
What did we learn about the album?
Lots of the basics.
It's called YE, it's seven tracks long and features Ty Dolla Sign, Jeremih, Young Thug, Charlie Wilson, and what seems to be a voicemail sample from Nicki Minaj and Kid Cudi.
He also makes several reference to his mental health including the opening lines of the album: "Most beautiful thoughts are always beside the darkest.
"Today I seriously thought about killing you, I contemplated it, pre-meditated murder.
"And I think about killing myself and I love myself way more than I love you, so."
Later in the album, he raps: "That's my bipolar... that's not a disability that's my superpower".
He also refers to his recent TMZ interview when he suggested slavery was "a choice" with the lines: "I say slavery a choice, they say how Ye. Imagine if they caught me on a wild day."
The album, which on first listen doesn't deviate too far from the production style of The Life of Pablo, is now available on streaming sites.
The cover shows a mountain range with a handwritten note saying: "I hate being bi-polar. It's awesome."
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It's finally happened. | The much-heralded "world's highest and longest" glass-bottomed bridge has opened to visitors in central China.
It connects two mountain cliffs in what are known as the Avatar mountains (the film was shot here) in Zhangjiajie, Hunan province.
Bridge in numbers
Completed in December, the 430m-long bridge cost $3.4m (£2.6m) to build and stands 300m above ground, state news agency Xinhua reported.
It has been paved with 99 panes of three-layered transparent glass.
And according to officials, the 6m-wide bridge - designed by Israeli architect Haim Dotan - has already set world records for its architecture and construction.
The year of glass bridges
Glass bridges in China have been a popular craze for the daring photo opportunities they provide. Events like mass yoga displays and even weddings have been staged on several such bridges.
One couple celebrated their special day by dangling in mid-air from a bridge in Pingjiang, also located in Hunan province.
But how safe is it?
This was the question on everyone's minds as the city geared up for the bridge's official opening.
But officials have staged high-profile events to try and reassure the public of the bridge's safety.
Officials sent in sledgehammers and even drove a car, filled with passengers, across the bridge earlier this year.
The BBC's Dan Simmons was invited to take a bash at the bridge.
Park officials have said a maximum of 8,000 visitors will be allowed on the bridge each day.
So those wanting to add another thrill to their bucket list are strongly encouraged to book their slots in advance.
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It's becoming a familiar story. | Karishma VaswaniAsia business correspondent@KarishmaBBCon Twitter
Fed officials say - but not particularly clearly - something that spooks the markets, no one really knows when US interest rates will rise, but everyone thinks they will very soon, and then commodities tumble, which in turn drags down Asian stock markets.
It feels like we go through this every couple of weeks. But even if you're not invested in the markets, here are three reasons why you should care about falling commodity prices and what it means for global growth.
Demand is falling
Copper prices are down by more than a fifth this year.
The metal is used in everything from homes to factories - so it's a really good gauge of overall global demand.
China is the world's biggest consumer of copper and other raw materials, because it just needs so much of it to power its massive economy. But China is facing the slowest growth in a quarter of a century - so it's not surprising we're seeing copper slump.
There's too much around
Oil inventories are at their highest level in at least a decade, because countries that produce crude drilled more out of the ground this year, adding to global production, according to Opec.
There's even more oil around than there was in 2009, right after the global financial crisis.
As we go into the winter season, Opec says the demand for oil could go up - but the reason there's so much oil in the markets is because no one anticipated that global demand would slow as much as it has.
All that glitters is not gold
Gold prices are at five-year lows, which is unusual - because in a period of slower global growth, gold is one commodity that usually does well, as investors look to keep their money safe.
But current gold prices are reflecting the fears that investors have for the future - the market is expecting rates in the US to rise - which means the US dollar will strengthen as more investors look for higher returns there. And that's bad for gold. (Although having said that, physical demand from China and India remains strong for the precious metal.)
So what does this tell us?
Investors are nervous about slowing global growth, but that should come as no surprise.
The commodities boom over the last decade has been driven by China's spectacular once-in-a-lifetime economic rise. Even if other countries in the region (India, Indonesia, Vietnam, Pakistan, Myanmar) see demand pick up for commodities, it is unlikely to be at the scale we saw in China - no one's close to being big enough.
So as China goes through what's being called the "new normal", it's likely that commodity producers are going to have to accept the same fate for themselves too.
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Just how long will it take? | Laura KuenssbergPolitical editor@bbclaurakon Twitter
The government is intent on persuading us Brexit can be done smoothly, and to time.
So the suggestion that the UK's most senior diplomat in Brussels has privately told the government that a final trade deal with the rest of the EU might not be done for 10 years, and might ultimately fail, may give rise to more nerves.
The BBC understands that Sir Ivan Rogers, the British ambassador to the EU, warned ministers that the European consensus was that a trade deal might not be concluded until the early to mid-2020s at the earliest - possibly a decade after the referendum.
And Sir Ivan, who conducted David Cameron's pre-referendum renegotiation, warned that approving an agreement in every country's domestic parliament - the process of ratification - might prove impossible.
That's despite the public hope from ministers that a trade agreement can be done before we leave the union.
Officially Number 10 says it doesn't recognise the advice. They are confident of negotiating a deal in the interests of the UK and the EU.
Sources say Sir Ivan was representing others' views, rather than reflecting the view of the British government.
But as Theresa May arrives at only her second EU summit as prime minister, where she won't be in the room when the other 27 leaders discuss Brexit over dinner, this is perhaps a reality check of just how hard these negotiations might prove.
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The European Vega rocket is back in business. | By Jonathan AmosBBC Science Correspondent
An enforced hiatus following the loss of a vehicle in July 2019 ended late on Wednesday with the successful deployment of 53 new satellites.
The payloads were dropped off high above the Earth using a new dispenser system that will now become a regular feature on future missions.
The aim is for Vega to service a big chunk of the vibrant market now emerging for small satellites.
Operators of these spacecraft, who're often just start-ups, SMEs or university departments, can't afford a dedicated launch and look to lower the cost by sharing a ride to orbit.
The development of the Small Spacecraft Mission Service (SSMS) dispenser used on Wednesday's mission was largely funded by the European Space Agency.
"This launch demonstrates Esa's ability to use innovation to lower the costs, become more flexible, more agile and make steps towards commercialisation," the agency's director general, Jan Wörner, said.
"This enhanced ability to access space for innovative small satellites will deliver a range of positive results from new environmental research to demonstrating new technologies."
The dispenser can accommodate a range of volumes and masses - from the 1kg, 10cm-cubed nanosatellite (or cubesat) class, all the way up to the more bulky 500 kg minisatellites.
Indeed, one company aboard Wednesday's flight, Swarm Technology of San Francisco, deployed 12 tiny spacecraft that measured just 10cm by 10cm by 2.5cm. In other words, not a lot bigger than a smartphone.
These are to be used in a communications constellation relaying short messages and data from connected devices - what's known as a Machine-to-Machine service.
The heaviest satellite deployed, for an undisclosed customer, weighed 138kg.
The largest batch of payloads belonged to the Planet Earth observation company. It put up 26 of its "Super Doves". Planet will use the satellites to maintain its once daily image of the entire globe.
Super Doves, compared to previous iterations, have improved sensors that return enhanced spectral information, enabling more detailed analysis of objects and features on the ground.
One of the mid-sized satellites (15kg) onboard was a methane observer developed by GHGSat of Montreal.
Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas, and like carbon dioxide is increasing its concentration in the atmosphere.
The Canadian company aims to help reduce emissions by tracking down leaks from oil and gas facilities, amongst others, and alerting the owners to the problem.
GHGSat says it intends to set up its global analytics hub in the UK.
Vega is the second rocket in a fortnight to make a return to flight following an earlier mishap.
The US-NZ Electron vehicle, operated by Rocket Lab, flew successfully from its base in New Zealand's North Island on 31 August.
The rocket deployed just the one satellite - a novel radar platform for the American startup Capella Space.
Dubbed Sequoia, this sub-100kg spacecraft is designed to be the first in commercial network of similarly sized sensors.
Radar has the great advantage of always being able to see the surface of the planet, whatever the weather or light conditions.
The previous Electron's anomaly occurred during a flight on 4 July. The Vega failure occurred on 10 July last year. In both cases, engineers said they could identify the causes and were able to take corrective action.
Arianespace, which operates Vega from French Guiana, had tried to launch the vehicle at the end of June but was forced to let the flight slip because of a lengthy period of unacceptable wind conditions above the Kuorou spaceport.
[email protected] and follow me on Twitter: @BBCAmos
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"Who's Tim Peake?" | By Helen BriggsBBC News
Just a few months ago, you could have been forgiven for asking that question.
But after a month on the International Space Station, the UK astronaut is rapidly achieving hero status, particularly among children - and adults - interested in science.
From his new home orbiting the Earth, the former Army major has entertained us with the thrills of backwards somersaults and swallowing bubbles of water in the conditions of microgravity.
And he has convinced us that he is only human by accidentally dialling a stranger back on planet Earth.
He's also done some serious work - risking his life to carry out Friday's spacewalk.
As it happened: Tim Peake walks in space
Five things about the spacewalk
Despite the risks of carrying out DIY balanced on a truss 200 miles above the Earth, Tim Peake appeared remarkably calm - even when his spacewalk ended early when his colleague reported water bubbles in his helmet.
Far from routine
Dr Robert Massey of the Royal Astronomical Society says the astronaut has the ability to communicate clearly with people back home while doing risky things.
"Astronauts can make spacewalks look routine," he says.
"Of course they're anything but, and it takes a lot of training and an appreciation of the dangers of space to make it happen.
"Tim has the knack of being able to do risky things like a spacewalk, whilst at the same time calmly and cheerfully telling the British public what he's up to."
Space drama
Half a century has passed since the first human walked in space.
In March 1965, cosmonaut Alexei Leonov ventured outside his spacecraft for 12 minutes.
It was not without drama, as the Russian's spacesuit expanded so much that he was forced to open a valve on the suit to deflate it enough to be able to squeeze back inside to safety.
Since then, about 200 astronauts from 10 countries have completed spacewalks - many of which have proved anything from eventful to downright dangerous.
And Tim Peake and spacewalking colleague Tim Kopra also had a hitch when Kopra's helmet leaked, although Nasa said the crew was never in danger.
Other members of the select group of elite men and women who have looked down at us - with only a thin visor between them and Earth - include Nasa astronaut Michael Foale, Nicholas Patrick and Piers Sellers, who were all born in Britain but moved to the US.
So if living, working and "walking" in space is not exactly new, what is behind Tim Peake's appeal to the British public?
'Just one of us'
Dr Emily Grossman, science communicator, broadcaster and educator, says as well as being a Brit, he is someone we can all relate to.
"He's a natural science communicator," she says. "He communicates in a way which engages a wide audience of all ages."
As well as being approachable and playful with a sense of fun, he makes us feel like he is "just one of us", she says, and it is not beyond the realms of possibility that we too could go into space.
"It dispels this image or stereotype of scientists as being distant and aloof," she explains.
"It shows his humanity that he's a real, approachable human being. It will hopefully make school kids feel it could be them next time."
Chris Riley, a film maker and writer specialising in science, says social media has also played a role in Tim Peake's success.
The UK astronaut has followed on from the Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield in making living in space seem part of our world, he says.
"He's not up there and away from us - he's still part of our community," says Prof Riley.
"He has an extraordinary past - he's exceptional, a high achiever, there's some bravery there, but he seems accessible."
Thinking big
Dr Robert Massey believes space makes us dream - and Tim Peake demonstrates that dreaming big can pay off.
"Astronomy and space often make us all dream a bit," he says.
"Tim Peake's mission - and his spacewalk - are no exception. He's a fantastic ambassador, showing just how far a career in science and engineering can take you.
"Tim's conversations with school students in particular must have inspired a few young people to think about following his path. And even if they don't make it to orbit, thinking big can lead them to do great things."
Follow Helen on Twitter.
Tim Peake in space: Want to know more?
Special report page: For the latest news, analysis and video
Guide: A day in the life of an astronaut
Explainer: The journey into space and back
Social media: Twitter looks ahead to lift-off
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She has never been alone. | Hazel Stewart, 47, faced charges of murdering her former husband - father of her children - and her ex-lover's wife, but she always has had family behind her.
In court appearances, where she has wept in the dock or sat frozen faced, her second husband, retired police superintendent David Stewart has been there.
Her son and daughter - children of the man she murdered - were in the gallery.
Going to court and coming from court, they are there. They hold umbrellas protectively over their mother - they stay close as they can to her side.
Despite the seriousness of the charges she faced, she was granted bail amid fears that she might take her own life, given the chance.
Her second husband took the witness box to say that he and her children would care for her.
In December, when Hazel Stewart's trial could not proceed because her former lover, dentist Trevor Howell, a 51-year-old dentist from Glebe Road in Castlerock, sent over 40 pages of testimony from his prison cell about the two murders, her sister was close to comfort her.
The story of Hazel Stewart, from Ballystrone Road, Coleraine, reads like a crime thriller - it doesn't seem real.
But it didn't start that way. She was a farmer's daughter. Eighteen-year-old Hazel Elkin married RUC officer Trevor Buchanan who was 22, at Omagh Baptist Church on 11 July 1981.
'Absolutely gutted'
Two children quickly followed and they moved to Coleraine in 1986 and settled in Charnwood Park.
The Buchanans went to the local Baptist church - so far, so normal.
But it was at a church playgroup that Hazel Stewart's world would spin on its axis after meeting dentist Colin Howell.
It was during swimming lessons organised by the church that they became attracted to one another.
That attraction became an obsession. Hazel became pregnant then, unsure if the child was that of her husband or her lover, had an abortion.
The couple would meet in secret at Castleroe Forest but they were soon spotted by a member of the church.
Both confessed to their pastor and their spouses. Colin Howell's wife Lesley, who had just had her fourth child, took an overdose.
Hazel's husband Trevor said he was "absolutely gutted" but both wanted their marriages to work.
And for four months, the couples received counselling and stuck to strict guidelines laid out by the church.
But the affair resumed.
And on the morning of 19 May, 1991, the bodies of Trevor Buchanan and Lesley Howell were found in a fume-filled car at the back of a row of cottages in Castlerock.
The grim scene was discovered by two members of their church. Trevor, was found in the front of the car while Lesley was in the boot, family photographs scattered around her body.
At the time, police thought it was a tragic double suicide. An inquest found the pair had died as a result of carbon monoxide poisoning.
But not everyone was convinced it was suicide. David Green, a church member who was also a policeman, was one of those who found the bodies.
Twenty years later he told the trial: "I had great suspicions after discovering the bodies. I was very unhappy... I believed something had happened that was not good."
Then, in 2009, the crime that had remained a secret for 20 years was revealed when Howell confessed to the murders.
It is only now that Hazel Stewart's trial is over that we really know the part she played in the meticulous planning of the killings.
During the course of the trial we learned how the lovers met a number of times to discuss the plan.
Howell gassed his wife as she slept on the sofa at their home in Knocklayde Park. He put her body in their car and drove to his lover's home.
She opened the garage door and made sure her husband was sleeping in the bedroom. She organised clothes to dress the body then watched as Howell carried her husband to the car, placing him beside Lesley.
Vulnerable
She took the pipe used to gas their spouses and burned it, cleaned up the bedroom and opened the windows.
Finally, she waited for a phone call from her lover to find out what she should say to the police.
During her trial Stewart denied she had given her husband a tuna sandwich laced with drugs and denied being part of a plot.
She claimed she was "soft, weak vulnerable, and easy prey" painting her former lover as "obsessed, calculating, controlling and very manipulative."
She said the reason she didn't help her husband was because she was terrified Howell would kill her and her children.
However, she resumed her relationship with Colin Howell weeks after the killings at first in secret, having sex in his dental practice in Ballymoney - with Hazel taking gas and air.
The court also heard Howell had once given her drugs at her home. This, the jury heard, was to help ease the couple's guilt...
But after five years the couple who killed to be together, parted. Howell met and married an American divorcee, and they went on to have five children together.
After a seven-year relationship with another man, in 2005 Hazel married her second husband David Stewart, a former police chief superintendent
But before they could celebrate their fourth wedding anniversary, Hazel was arrested - charged with the murder of her first husband and her former lover's wife.
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A chronology of key events:
| 1918 - Independence proclaimed.
1920- Peace treaty with Russia signed.
1934 - Prime Minister Konstantin Pats leads bloodless coup and establishes authoritarian rule.
1938 - Pats becomes president under new constitution.
1939 - The Soviet Union compels Estonia to accept Soviet military bases.
1940 June - Soviet troops march in.
1940 August - Estonia incorporated into Soviet Union.
1941 - German troops invade.
1944 - Estonia reannexed by the Soviet Union. Tens of thousands of Estonians deported to Siberia and Central Asia.
1988 - Popular Front campaigns for democracy. "Singing revolution" brings a third of the population together in a bid for national unity and self-determination.
Independence
1991 - Communist rule collapses. Soviet government recognizes the independence of the Baltic republics.
1992 - Lennart Meri becomes president.
1994 - Russian troops leave. Estonia joins Partnership for Peace, allowing limited military cooperation with Nato.
1996 - President Meri re-elected.
1997 - Estonia invited to begin European Union membership negotiations.
1999 - New centre-right government under Prime Minister Mart Laar, who led a previous government in 1992.
2000 - Estonia and Russia expel diplomats in tit-for-tat moves over spying claims.
2001 October - Former member of the Central Committee of the Soviet-era Communist Party Arnold Ruutel sworn in as president.
2001 December - President Ruutel signs into law a bill scrapping the requirement for candidates for public office to be proficient in the Estonian language.
2002 January - Mart Laar resigns as prime minister after squabbling within ruling coalition.
Siim Kallas becomes prime minister in a new coalition government in which his Reform Party shares power with Centre Party.
2002 November - Nato summit in Prague includes Estonia on list of countries formally invited to join the alliance.
Nato, EU membership
2002 December - EU summit in Copenhagen formally invites Estonia to join.
2003 April - President Ruutel invites Res Publica leader Juhan Parts to be premier in coalition government with Reform Party and People's Union following elections the previous month.
2003 September - Estonians vote overwhelmingly to join the European Union in a referendum.
2004 March - Estonia admitted to Nato.
2004 May - Estonia is one of 10 new states to join the EU.
2004 November - Defence Minister Margus Hanson resigns after classified documents are stolen from his home.
2005 February - Foreign Minister Kristiina Ojuland is sacked after classified documents are found to be missing from ministry.
2005 March - President Ruutel declines invitation to attend Moscow celebrations in May marking the anniversary of the end of World War II.
Prime Minister Parts submits government's resignation after vote of no confidence in Justice Minister Ken-Marti Vaher over tough anticorruption programme.
2005 April - Reform Party's Andrus Ansip confirmed as prime minister.
Tensions with Russia
2005 May - Estonia and Russia sign treaty delineating border.
2005 June - Parliament ratifies border treaty with Russia but defies warnings from Moscow by introducing amendment referring to Soviet occupation. Russia reacts by withdrawing from treaty.
2006 May - Parliament ratifies EU constitution.
2006 September - Toomas Hendrik Ilves, a former foreign minister, is elected president.
2007 February - Parliament passes a law prohibiting the display of monuments glorifying Soviet rule, paving the way for the relocation of a controversial Red Army war memorial in Tallinn.
2007 March - Estonia becomes the first country to allow internet voting for national parliamentary elections. The prime minister's Reform Party wins by a narrow margin.
2007 April - Authorities relocate a controversial Red Army war memorial in Tallinn. One person is killed and more than 40 injured as protesters, mostly ethnic Russians, try to halt the removal. Russia warns of serious consequences.
2009 January - Estonian court acquits four ethnic Russians accused of leading riots sparked by government's response to relocate a Soviet-era war memorial in Tallinn.
2009 June - Parliament approves move to double size of Estonian contingent serving in Afghanistan as part of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), from 150 to around 290 soldiers.
Estonia joins eurozone
2011 January - Estonia adopts the euro.
2011 February - Parliamentary elections. The Reform Party and its coalition partner IRL retain their majority in parliament with 56 out of 101 seats.
2011 August - Toomas Hendrik Ilves is re-elected president for a second five-year term.
2012 October - Estonia and Russia re-start talks on a border treaty, seven years after Russia withdrew from an agreement signed in 2005, in response to a dispute over treatment of the Soviet past.
2014 February - Estonia and Russia sign a new treaty ending their border dispute.
Further tension with Russia
2014 September - Amid tension with the European Union and Nato over Russian intervention in Ukraine, Estonia accuses Moscow of abducting border guard Eston Kohver. Russia says he was on the Russian side of the border and accuses him of spying.
2015 March - Prime Minister Taavi Roivas's Reform Party emerges as winner in parliamentary election, following campaign dominated by fears over defence due to Russia's role in the Ukrainian crisis.
NATO reinforces its presence in the Baltic states and its forces conduct major military drills in the region.
2015 September - Russia returns detained border guard Eston Kohver in return for Aleksei Dressen, who was imprisoned in Estonia in 2012 on charges of spying for Moscow.
2017 March - The first of about 800 British troops arrive in Estonia as part of a major Nato mission in the Baltic states to deter what the alliance regards as Russian aggression.
2019 March - The opposition centre-right Reform party wins the parliamentary election, beating the governing Centre party into second place. Reform leader Kaja Kallas is set to become Estonia's first woman prime minister.
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Let's start with what we know. | By Nick EardleyBBC political correspondent
Wednesday's confidence vote means the prime minister is staying in the job for now and the Conservatives can't force another confidence vote for a year.
In terms of certainty, that's about it, because the result - 200 backing the PM, 117 opposing her - illustrates how deep divisions in the Conservative Party are.
Theresa May's supporters insist that the issue has now been put to bed - it's time for the party to fall in line.
But the tally was not as comfortable as the PM's supporters wanted.
Her allies admitted before the declaration anything over a hundred would be a bad result.
Some spoke of a big win to "lance the boil" of internal dissent. That did not happen.
Instead, one-third of Tory MPs said they do not have confidence in Mrs May.
A source from the backbench group of Conservative Eurosceptics, the European Research Group (ERG), described it as "the mother of all wake-up calls".
Others predict the result would have been a lot closer if the PM hadn't said she would stand down before the 2022 election.
Some say she can't go on.
Former Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab says it's hard to see how Mrs May can lead the party forward. ERG chairman Jacob Rees-Mogg says she should resign.
Even her backers admit things look shaky. One MP who backed Mrs May describes her as "limping". Another predicts a "bumpy and messy" period ahead.
Strong and stable seems a distant memory.
Others, however, think Mrs May now has a month to turn things around; to change her Brexit plan and win over her party.
The key issue (though not the only one) remains the backstop - designed to avoid a hard border in Ireland at all costs after Brexit.
The PM has told her MPs she wants legally binding assurances to help address their concerns.
Many now say Mrs May's future relies on what she secures in the next three or four weeks.
Several MPs believe a barometer of success will be whether she can win the DUP back on side - no small task given their anger at what is currently on the table.
This helps explain why the PM spent 45 minutes with Arlene Foster on Wednesday afternoon when she could have been lobbying her own MPs in the run up to the confidence vote.
The big question is how she achieves this.
Europe has shown no desire to reopen the withdrawal agreement which has caused so much anger.
Would a note of clarification be enough? For many Conservatives the answer is a simple no.
One Brexiteer says the relationship in the party "is not going to be repaired unless the withdrawal agreement is abandoned - we're not going to give up on that".
Mrs May has Remain-backing critics too. They say the party is in gridlock and that the only way to end the logjam is another referendum.
So getting a majority in Parliament for a Brexit deal is still a mammoth task.
Even if Mrs May can win over a number of those who said last night they have no confidence in her, it might not be enough.
At present there's a familiar feeling around Westminster; many Tories remain unhappy with the prime minister.
As one veteran puts it: "We're exactly where we were before."
A weary-sounding minister concludes: "Same old, same old."
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"Please don't go!" | By Jenny HillBBC Berlin correspondent
This week's edition of the influential news magazine Der Spiegel is a beseeching entreaty in red, white and blue.
Covered in a union jack and printed in English and German, the publication is dedicated to the referendum debate.
Der Spiegel is unambiguously opposed to a Brexit: "The only internationally known politician in favour of a Brexit,' its editors write, 'is Donald Trump - and, if nothing else does, that alone should make the British worry."
The majority of Germans apparently agree; earlier this month a poll revealed 79% don't want Britain to leave the EU.
For months many here have been bemused, perplexed and downright concerned by the notion that Britain might want to leave.
The Germans hoping Britain stays in the EU
Germany conflicted on how to handle Brexit
German power is the real key to Europe
EU referendum: All you need to know
EU referendum issues guide
In the words of one of Angela Merkel's senior conservatives: "David Cameron is like the sorcerer's apprentice. He doesn't know what he's started."
But, with just over a week to referendum day, the German press are happy to lay bare their version of how it could finish.
A Brexit, Spiegel predicts, would be "a threefold catastrophe: bad for Germany, bad for Britain and cataclysmic for Europe."
The newspaper Die Zeit envisages a doomsday Brexit scenario. Panic at the London stock exchange, a scramble among Europe's leaders to maintain a united front, a party for Marine le Pen and independence for Scotland. Great Britain, the newspaper predicts, will be flying blind.
Europe is jittery. For the first time, yields on 10-year German government bonds have fallen below zero.
And the real possibility that Britain may vote leave has generated a palpable sense of alarm in Berlin.
Which explains Angela Merkel's recent intervention in the referendum debate.
She and her advisors have been wary of doing so; they are keenly aware that British voters and commentators could (and some did) interpret any public comment as interference. And they don't wish to unwittingly boost the Leave campaign.
Mrs Merkel's language was careful and muted. Her short statement carefully timed and co-ordinated with Downing Street. But it contained a stark warning; if Britain opts out, it will lose its bargaining power with the EU.
Her finance minister was less diplomatic. "Out is out," said Wolfgang Schauble.
A Britain outside the EU could forget access to the single market, he said, ruling out the kind of trading relationship held by Norway or Switzerland.
"That won't work," he said. "It would require the country to abide by the rules of a club from which it currently wants to withdraw."
Far less well publicised was what a senior German CDU MP told Der Spiegel.
Juergen Hardt, the party's foreign policy spokesman, offered an intriguing glimpse into how Berlin may be preparing for Brexit.
If the UK votes to leave, Mr Hardt said, then the EU should gauge possible action to prevent a British exit from becoming a reality. Brussels shouldn't close the door right away.
One way or another, Germany wants to keep Britain close.
Why?
There are the obvious reasons; within Europe, Britain is a powerful economic and political ally for Germany. Without Britain, some here worry that Germany will be perceived as too big, too dominant within the union.
The two countries are important to each other commercially; the UK is Germany's fifth most important trading partner.
Take the car industry: last year Germany sold 810,000 cars to the UK - around a fifth of the total number it exports worldwide.
And German companies manufactured 216,000 cars in the UK, according to the head of the German car makers' association.
Matthias Wissman has repeatedly warned of the negative impact a Brexit would have on the entire industry.
And there is a wider concern in Berlin. As one senior MP put it: "Brexit would be a catastrophic and disastrous message to the rest of the world that Europe doesn't work and can't stick together."
Merkel's future
As one commentator put it, part of the reason Angela Merkel supported David Cameron's efforts to renegotiate a relationship with the EU is that she does not want to go down in history as the German chancellor under whom Europe fell apart.
Angela Merkel makes no secret of her commitment to the European project.
The degree to which a Brexit might encourage other countries to follow suit is difficult to quantify.
But it is clear that populism and anti-EU sentiment are changing Europe's political landscape - fuelled in part by the refugee crisis.
Last month, a YouGov poll revealed that, in the event of a referendum here, nearly one in three Germans would vote to leave the EU.
That is surprising in a country where, it is often said, people identify as European first, German second.
There is a general election in Germany next year.
Angela Merkel has yet to announce whether she will stand but it's widely believed that she will.
Her Christian Democrats are likely to lose votes to the party Alternativ Fuer Deutschland.
It has positioned itself as anti-Islamic and wants more power for national governments within Europe.
There is a lot of stake for the Merkel administration.
But there is another force driving those who want Britain to stay.
As one commuter sitting in the sunshine outside Berlin's main railway station put it: "Great Britain is doing what they think is best for them. I like the British, I like London. I'm sure the Brits will do the right thing."
There is, among Germans, a genuine affection for Britain.
As those Spiegel editors write: "Germany has always looked across the Channel with envy… (Brits) have an inner independence that we Germans lack."
That affection was perhaps most in evidence here last summer during the Queen's visit to Berlin (the British Royal Family is hugely popular here) when German television went into royal overdrive and crowds turned out to greet the British monarch.
During that visit, both the Queen and the German president appealed for European unity and made reference to World War Two through which they both lived.
"The European Union needs Britain," said Joachim Gauck.
"A united Europe, a strong European Union represents stability, peace and freedom for us all."
It is a narrative which underpins discussions here because, fundamentally, for many Germans, that's still what the EU is all about.
At times there is frustration at the level of the debate in Britain. Boris Johnson's likening of the EU's aims to those of Hitler irritated many Germans.
And Iain Duncan Smith's claims that "the Germans" had, in effect, bullied David Cameron over his renegotiations infuriated the government.
There is an acceptance here that Britain's perspective on the EU has always been markedly different.
And there is a consensus that, without that perspective, Europe would be a poorer place.
Chancellor Angela Merkel on the EU referendum:
"Obviously, it is up to the citizens of the UK themselves how they wish to vote in the upcoming referendum. I've said repeatedly before that I personally would hope and wish for the UK to stay part and parcel of the EU."
"We work well together with the UK particularly when we talk about new rules for the EU. We have to develop those together with the UK and whenever we negotiate that, you can much better have an influence on the debate when you sit at the bargaining table and you can give input to those negotiations and the result will then invariably be better rather than being outside of the room."
"It would not only be in our interest but it could also be in the interest of Britain when it can bring its whole political weight to the negotiating table as part and parcel of the EU." (Speaking at joint news conference with Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in Berlin, 2 June).
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Picture the magical scene. | By Gerry HoltBBC News
It's a weekday evening, around quarter to seven.
Someone is in their pants bouncing up and down on the sofa, shouting for cereal and genuinely loving life.
Someone else lies on the floor, eyes closed, praying for the bedtime gods to step in and make it all stop.
Another person runs from room to room in the dimly-lit house, frantically tidying away toys, heating up milk, running the bath.
Millions of parents know and love (or perhaps not) that last stretch of the day before their child's bedtime.
While mums and dads crawl to the finish line, daring to dream of the moment they get to sit down and watch Netflix with a gin and tonic, their beloved little folk somehow get a second, rather incredible, burst of life.
But just when you think it's game over, in steps Tom:
"Hello," says the actor, "I'm Tom."
For seven whole minutes the room is transfixed by Hollywood star Tom Hardy's intense but soothing voice. And his choice of pyjamas.
It's the CBeebies bedtime story.
And it may have just saved bedtime.
How one superhero reader sent mums (and dads) into meltdown
A-lister upon A-lister has taken on bedtime reading duties on CBeebies each night.
From actors and rock stars to sportspeople and scientists, there have been some eye-opening celebrity readers in recent years.
Olympic athlete Dame Jessica Ennis-Hill, singers Josh Homme, Dolly Parton and Elton John, astronaut Tim Peake (who read from space), actors Eddie Redmayne, Emily Watson and Ewan McGregor, and TV chef Nadiya Hussain have all put their own spin on the bedtime story.
But these stars all have one thing in common - young kids might not even know (or care) who they are.
When Chris Evans (the Hollywood heart-throb not the British radio presenter) read his bedtime story, it seemed pretty clear it wasn't really for the kids at all:
Parents also enjoyed Floella Benjamin, who presented children's TV show Play School in the 70s (and is now a baroness with a seat in the House of Lords).
And Homme, I mean, would any toddler really know his band Queens of the Stone Age?
Homme revealed in an NME interview that he had recorded his tale the day before appearing at Reading Festival.
Up next, actor Orlando Bloom, who, let's face it, will please a lot more adults than tots.
He was announced with this Facebook post:
One user wrote: "How on earth r u getting all these A-listers??? I think it's brilliant (for the moms ha)."
CBeebies retorted: "They ask us now!"
The 'Tom Hardy effect'
The bedtime slot already had a pretty stellar roll call before character actor Hardy got involved in 2016. From David Hasselhoff and Sir Patrick Stewart to David Tennant and Rosamund Pike.
Hardy asked to appear because he "really wanted to be in something his children could watch, enjoy and remember", says producer Claire Taylor.
He proved popular. Nearly 417,000 people engaged with this Facebook plug:
Hardy's been back four more times - including on Mother's Day and Valentine's Day.
His appearance on 14 February was last year's most watched bedtime story, with a TV audience of nearly 600,000.
This year's most popular episode, with more than 400,000 TV viewers, was Doctor Who actress Sharon D Clarke who read a book on singer Ella Fitzgerald as part of Black History Month.
"It's wonderful to be able to please two - or more - generations in one viewing," says Claire.
"The children are soothed by a story that marks the end of their day and the grown-ups are wowed and amazed at seeing their favourite celebrity or hero doing something so unlikely."
The CBeebies team tries to pick "a strong mix of male and female role models" who'll be entertaining and engaging.
Claire says they're grateful for "the Tom Hardy effect" and they love the comments "that come flooding in" each time a new celeb is announced.
How do they choose who reads what?
The programme producers have the final say - but stars are asked if they have family favourites they're keen to read so they'll be read "from the heart".
Three of pet-lover Hardy's five stories were about dogs and he even brought his pet pooch Woody along for filming.
Stories are usually filmed at CBeebies House in Salford's MediaCity but sometimes they're on location. Dolly Parton was filmed in Nashville.
Claire says: "It's amazing how nervous even the biggest of stars are at first. They're totally out of their comfort zone so we tell them to imagine they're reading to one child, perhaps their own.
"I remember pinching myself asking David Hasselhoff to make a 'brum brum' noise when playing with a toy tractor; asking Tom Hardy if he would mind cuddling up to a fluffy toy dog and getting Jessica Ennis-Hill to say 'On your marks, get set, go!' It can be very surreal."
Shoots can take up to four hours and all readers get the same fee, which is often donated to charity.
What did the biggest stars read?
Many thousands of mums and dads have asked for more megastar readers - although some called for a broader range of celebrities to appeal to all parents.
Referring to Hardy, one Facebook user posted: "If this was a well-known attractive female on CBeebies with the same idea that she was appealing to all the dads out there, the BBC would get slated."
It's also a matter of continuing debate as to whether TV before bed is good for children - though the latest research suggests it has little effect.
But just in case, here are a few expert tips - you should watch TV with your child so they can talk to you about what they're seeing, and don't let them watch telly right before bedtime.
Could Prince William or his brother Harry be next?
This year to date there have been just under six million iPlayer requests for episodes of Bedtime Stories, and the CBeebies team say they have a huge list of ideas for new readers.
"Kylie Minogue has been on our wish list for a very long time...," says Claire. "Along with Thandie Newton, Stormzy, Adele. We like to aim very high, so… royalty!"
Over the festive period there are "some fantastically strong female celebrities" signed up, she adds.
What happens after the closing credits is anyone's guess.
Everyone lives happily ever after, right?
The End.
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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Beguiling, beautiful and brutal. | Wyre DaviesRio de Janeiro correspondent
Rio de Janeiro is all of the above.
Perhaps it's the physical nature of the "Marvelous City" that everything seems to be so close together - the ugly and the serene, rich and poor, violent and peaceful.
The death of 17-year-old Eduardo Felipe Victor dos Santos might have gone down as one more barely noticed statistic in the long-running war between Rio's military police and the city's many drugs gangs.
At Eduardo's funeral in the sprawling Sao Joao Batisita cemetery, just a stone's throw from the upmarket air-conditioned shopping centres and tourist hotspots, mourners had arrived on buses from Providencia favela - or shanty town - where Eduardo lived and died.
The air was heavy with emotion, the dead youth's mother and grandmother inconsolable as they watched his coffin being slid into a small space in the cemetery wall.
A family friend made a brief but impassioned speech, saying that had it not been for images taken furtively on a mobile phone, by someone who witnessed Eduardo's death, the shocking truth might never have come out.
The widely shared footage clearly shows a group of armed policemen standing over the youth's heavily bloodstained body.
One of the officers calmly places a gun on the floor and then into Eduardo's hand. The officer then fires the pistol into the air twice, presumably to give the impression that Eduardo had shot at police before being killed.
The five-man police team has since been arrested and Rio's high profile chief of security, Jose Mariano Beltrame, has vowed that any rogue officers will be dismissed and prosecuted.
Trigger happy?
When I recently asked Mr Beltrame if Rio had a problem with officers who "shoot first and ask questions later", his denial was emphatic.
"That's not true. If you look, we have figures that show the number of police killings, and those are falling," the secretary told me in his downtown Rio office.
But he added: "Yes, we used to have 'cops who kill', but today you can only say that in a few cases."
Human rights groups like Amnesty International dispute the official explanation. In a recent report, Amnesty accused Rio's military police of being "trigger happy" and said that more than 1,500 murders in the city over the last five years were committed by on-duty police officers.
Whether deliberately targeted or killed in crossfire, the fact that hundreds of people die every year at the hands of Rio's police is arguably another sign that the so called "pacification" policy in the city's favelas is fast unravelling.
With more than 50,000 violent deaths every year, Brazil has one of the highest murder rates in the world.
About half of those killed are young black men and, according to the Institute of Public Security, many cities including Rio have seen a big increase this year in the number of people killed "as a result of policy activity".
Many Brazilians say you can't look at what is happening in a huge, diverse country through the prism of one city alone.
All eyes on Rio
That is a fair point, but it's a matter of fact that there's huge international focus on Rio these days because of its international reputation, last year's World Cup and the forthcoming Olympic Games.
So, given the recent figures, does Mr Beltrame envisage serious security problems in Rio between now and the Games?
"I obviously don't have a crystal ball, so I can't guess what's going to happen," is his first answer, but then he expands.
"Actually, I think it's the opposite. We're going to have a very peaceful Olympics Games, like many of the events we organised before. But the Olympics are not my main worry. My main concern is the people of Rio that don't want and can't carry on with this amount of guns around."
That last point is significant. Mr Beltrame occupies a powerful and high-profile position, but says he has no political ambitions and so feels free to speak his mind.
He clearly thinks there are too many guns in circulation in the city, fuelling the drugs wars between the numerous gangs (three distinctive "big" gangs identified by him) and police.
"It can't go on like this," says the secretary, who advocates much tougher gun control and a serious debate about the legalisation of drugs.
Police targeted
The focus this week may have been on another troubled young man who died at the hands of police, arguably when he could and should have been detained alive, whether or not he was involved in selling drugs in his favela.
But Rio's security forces, too, are frequently the victims of violent crime, retribution and murder.
Earlier this week, a policeman on the outskirts of the city was tortured to death, his body dragged through the streets behind a horse.
There have been numerous kidnappings of officers from their cars and homes, and living in the communities where they work is often not an option for policemen and women concerned about their families' safety.
Rio de Janeiro is still one of the world's great cities and, as was the case with the World Cup, it will probably get its act together in time to put on a great Olympic Games.
But with less than a year to go before those Games arrive, these stories - of police violence and impunity, of murder committed against the police, and of heavily armed gangs controlling favelas - are not images of a city at peace with itself.
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This is no ordinary royal engagement. | By Daniela RelphRoyal correspondent
Meghan Markle brings something different to the British Royal Family.
She is American, divorced, an actress and mixed race.
She is also a campaigner with a variety of humanitarian interests and won't want her marriage to limit her ability to speak out and support various causes - particularly those of gender equality.
As an advocate for UN Women, Ms Markle has worked on helping young girls reach their leadership potential. When she was first approached about working with the United Nations the Suits star insisted on undertaking a period of "work experience" first.
In her own time she shadowed Elizabeth Nyamayaro, a senior advisor at UN Women. Elizabeth was impressed by the intelligence, commitment and curiosity of the actress.
The pair have since worked together closely on a number of UN missions and Elizabeth has no doubt that her friend and colleague will thrive in her new royal role.
"Her ability to listen, her passion for other people, wanting to create social change with that level of platform can only be a positive thing. She'll be fine, she'll be great in fact."
But the media coverage of the relationship in its early days unsettled sections of the British press and its readers.
Prince Harry even took the unprecedented step of issuing a public statement asking for privacy and describing some of the coverage as having "racial undertones".
Much was made of his fiancée's upbringing in Los Angeles, with the area described as gang-infested and a place riddled with racial tension.
However, Ms Markle actually grew up in a very middle class neighbourhood of Los Angeles and attended a private Catholic school.
But in many ways she is an outsider.
Prince Harry isn't following a traditional path - he's not marrying the daughter of a grand aristocratic family.
His wife-to-be now has to negotiate her way through the British aristocracy, in a similar vein to her future sister-in-law, the Duchess of Cambridge.
It is an experience American nutritionist and author Julie Montagu knows well, as the future Countess of Sandwich.
Born and brought up in Illinois, she married the son of the Earl of Sandwich and is now Viscountess Hinchingbrooke.
She splits her time between London and the family estate, Mapperton, in Dorset.
"Even now I still get things wrong," she told me. "The British upper classes have their own way of doing things. But as an American I bring my optimism, positivity and work ethic into the mix which I believe is hugely important."
Ms Markle is joining a family and entering a world unlike anything she has previously experienced. Yes it brings with it great privilege. But it also means a lack of privacy and the acceptance of a public life. As an actress she may find herself well equipped to deal with the scrutiny ahead.
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The Sun has come in late on this one. | A service highlighting...... the riches of the daily press
"Are beards a must-have…or simply a must-shave?"
There's a celebrity hit and miss list.
Prince Harry: tick
Jeremy Paxman: cross
Jon Hamm: tick
Matt Prior: tick
Daniel Craig: cross
Robert Pattinson: cross
Facial hair is then vigorously debated by two hacks.
Fur, get it…is Gabriele Dirvanauskas. "I've never found Prince Harry fanciable before. But his new face-furniture instantly makes him look more rough and ready than pampered prince."
Warming to her theme, she asks why beards are big in 2013. "They reflect what women now want. We are bored of men who have been plucked and preened to Joey Essex standards. We like our men rugged and ready to rock."
But Jen Tippett bristles at the trend. "The unhygienic face-fuzz that turns a passionate kiss into a facial rash and harbours last night's dinner, like Roald Dahl's Mr Twit, is apparently now hot."
She is particularly unimpressed by Ben Fogle's effort, which offended television execs. "Sorry Ben, but I have to agree with them. Countryfile is no place for a Shoreditch hipster."
Ah, the h word.
"What did the hipsters do for us," might be a GCSE history question in the year 2213. Okay, so they didn't build straight roads like the Romans. But they did ensure that artisan pickles, omniscient baristas and bicycle ergonomics are hip and zeitgeisty.
And that 78%* of Paper Monitor's male colleagues are now bearded or mutton-chopped.
*This stat may not be exact.
Follow @BBCNewsMagazine on Twitter and on Facebook
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1. Violent black bloc protest | By Jessica LussenhopBBC News
Just before Donald Trump's swearing in, a group of a few hundred black-clad, balaclava wearing protesters carrying anarchist symbol flags began a fast-moving march through downtown Washington, just blocks from the inauguration. One large sign read, "Make Racists Afraid Again".
The march turned violent, with people in black bloc smashing business windows and upending trash cans. A large number of helmeted police with nightsticks moved to drive them away, but many of the marchers ran, continuing to make their way through the streets. Eventually they were corralled together by police and there were reports of arrests.
2. Free weed
Members of a Washington group called DCMJ began handing out free marijuana to promote legalisation and protest Trump's pick for attorney general, Senator Jeff Sessions.
Sessions famously once said that "good people don't smoke marijuana", and at his confirmation hearing would not commit to not enforcing the federal ban on marijuana in states that have legalised it.
Small amounts of marijuana are free to posses and distribute in Washingon, DC.
DCMJ members passed out rolled joints from inside a fake prison cell, draped with a sign that read "Jeff Sessions is Backwards on Marijuana".
3. Blocking inauguration check points
Several groups including Black Lives Matter, environmentalists, LGBT rights activists and many others staged sit-ins that blocked revellers from check points leading to the inauguration. Some demonstrators even chained themselves to gates.
Trump supporters were still able to gain access to the Inauguration through other checkpoints.
4. Democrats sport matching Affordable Care Act buttons
Nancy Pelosi and other House Democrats will be wearing matching blue buttons that say #ProtectOurCare, a reference to the Affordable Care Act, which is under threat of repeal under the new Administration.
Pelosi tweeted that the buttons are "symbol of our solidarity and support for the ACA during today's inauguration".
Several female legislators also plan to wear pink "pussyhats" to the inauguration. The knitted hats will be worn by hundreds of protesters at tomorrow's Women's March and are a reference to Trump's vulgar comments about assaulting women.
5. Staying home
Many citizens chose to register their protests by sitting out the inauguration. Where crowds packed the parade route and National Mall to watch the swearing in of Barack Obama, there were noticeably empty patches during the Inauguration ceremony. Meanwhile, the DC's transportation authority tweeted out ridership statistics: 193,000 people took the metro today, compared with 513,000 when Obama was inaugurated in 2009 and 317,000 when Obama was inaugurated for his second term in 2013. It was even less than the 197,000 who rode to see George W Bush inaugurated in 2005.
Meanwhile, journalist Brian Stelter asked his Twitter followers to send pictures of how they were watching the inauguration. Several responded with images of turned-off televisions.
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First they came for the washing machines. | Kamal AhmedEconomics editor@bbckamalon Twitter
Then the solar panels.
And now steel and aluminium.
President Donald Trump has always made it clear he wanted a new approach to trade.
And in the White House's proposals for new tariffs on steel and aluminium - following similar moves on domestic appliances and green infrastructure - he has revealed the latest push to put America First into action.
Given the statistics since the Second World War suggest that global economic growth is linked to higher levels of free trade, this might seem a contrary approach for the largest economy in the world.
There are a myriad of economic studies which argue that protectionism ultimately reduces employment and increases prices for consumers.
Adam Smith, often described as the father of free market economics, said: "It is the maxim of every prudent master of a family never to attempt to make at home what it will cost him more to make than to buy".
Just as it makes sense for a family to "trade" with others for its own well-being - buying and selling goods - it makes the same sense for countries, Adam Smith argued.
More trade, freer trade, makes economic sense, proponents argue.
So, why is President Trump taking a different view?
1. Headline grabber
The general trend of global economics is towards freer trade, whatever the noise around protectionism.
The latest World Trade Organization (WTO) statistical review revealed that trade restrictive measures had fallen to their lowest level since 2008.
So, a threatened increase in tariffs grabs headlines, but its economic effects will be at the margins given the fundamentals underpinning global trade flows.
2. Easy political argument
The gains from free trade - for example, lower consumer prices because of the reduced cost of imported goods and the reduction in poverty in far off countries - are diffuse, distant and difficult to quantify.
Conversely, the "impact" of cheaper imports - for example a closed factory - is concentrated and easy to see.
During the Presidential campaign I visited Monessan, Pennsylvania, the heart of America's rust belt.
It used to be a steel producing town of 40,000 people.
That number has fallen to 7,000 and the town is scarred by the derelict skeletons of once prosperous factories.
Unemployment and poverty rates are crippling high.
You can see a short video of my interview with the town mayor, Lou Mavrakis, from 2016 here.
His anger is palpable.
In such a situation, it is relatively straightforward to focus on cheaper imports as the cause of the problem, despite other factors - such as a change in the type of high-tech steel markets are demanding - being equally significant.
America also lacks the type of unemployment safety net and skills retraining common across Europe - so the effects of factory closures are starker.
With such a toxic mix, President Trump - with the crucial mid-term elections approaching - is making a political argument to the voters of Pennsylvania.
I will block cheaper steel imports and save jobs.
Even if the economics suggest that - in aggregate - the opposite will be the case.
3. Short-term reality
President Trump is arguing that global free trade has been nothing of the sort.
It has in fact been asymmetric trade, more helpful to emerging markets than to established ones.
This approach to trade - as a zero-sum gain of "you win, therefore I must lose" - is again disputed by economists.
The WTO says that protectionist measures "ultimately leads to bloated, inefficient producers supplying consumers with outdated, unattractive products, in the end, factories close and jobs are lost despite the protection and subsidies".
"If other governments around the world pursue the same policies, markets contract and world economic activity is reduced."
Which will have a negative impact on America.
But long-term economic risk is of less concern to Present Trump than short-term realities.
The WTO has admitted, belatedly some would argue, that the gains from free trade are "often uneven" and "may have led to rising wage inequality".
Those at the lower end of the income scale are particularly affected.
That downside - smaller than the overall gains of free trade but still significant - is President Trump's focus.
4. Mighty domain
The final reason, I believe, is a signal to the world.
President Trump's policy is not just America First, but America Decides.
He is attempting to show that it will be for America to call the tune on trade, whatever the warnings from Theresa May about her "deep concern" about protectionist moves.
Free trade deals with the US - with the UK for example - will be on America's terms.
It was John Wayne who - quoting the words of John Mitchum - said of America that "my pulse runs fast at the might of her domain".
President Trump - I would imagine - feels similar.
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It seems like another era. | Laura KuenssbergPolitical editor@bbclaurakon Twitter
A few weeks ago a Cabinet minister told me very firmly there was no way that Parliament could shut up shop because of the coronavirus.
There were already concerns about the wisdom of carrying on, but they were adamant, MPs must not disappear from the green benches: the symbol it would send to the country would be entirely wrong.
The Commons didn't close during World War II after all, they said, it couldn't be allowed to happen now.
But, day by day, as MPs reported symptoms, one minister testing positive, but still people in Westminster clustered together, disquiet grew.
The Speaker just yesterday urging members to spread out on the green benches properly, to observe the rules on keeping their distance the rest of the country is now expected to obey.
For the thousands of staff who work in Parliament's cafes, offices, facilities too, there were concerns about everyone's safety in what is so often described as a village, where many different kinds of people interact in all sorts of ways.
Now, from tonight, after the emergency legislation that ministers have been rushing to pass has been granted the rubber stamp from the Palace - Royal Assent - Parliament is expected to rise.
The motions have already been laid to allow that to happen - in other words, the mechanism to push the button is already prepared.
In straightforward terms, the place is only really falling in line with much of the country, where gatherings of more than two people are now against the rules, and everyone must stay home if they can.
MPs will of course still work helping their constituents, many of them in recent days have been frantically trying to seek information and answers on their behalf.
There is a date planned to return at the end of April when MPs technically have to come back to vote on the Finance Bill, and hope then for some kind of managed return.
Yet, tonight's closure is a potent symbol of how far the virus' reach extends.
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Facebook is 10 years old. | Rory Cellan-JonesTechnology correspondent@BBCRoryCJon Twitter
Hard to believe in two ways - it seems to have been around forever, and yet to be something brand new and of the moment. And perhaps that is the secret of its success - the ability to weave its way into our lives while constantly adapting to changing circumstances.
I've spent a little time trying to find out about its early history in the UK, mainly by appealing to my Facebook friends to show they were among the earliest British members of the social network.
Facebook - which started in Mark Zuckerberg's Harvard bedroom and spread across the US university's campus like wildfire - was aimed solely at students at first, and only those at the most exclusive colleges. The same was true when it arrived in the UK in 2005 - only those with Oxford, Cambridge and LSE email addresses could join.
Among those who respond to my Facebook query is Jennifer Hawton who joined in June 2005 while she was reading natural sciences at Cambridge. She remembers sitting in her room thinking "I'm naturally nosy, I like to know about people", and signing up.
Nine years on and working in London, she still uses it reasonably frequently, keeping in touch with old friends from university.
An even earlier joiner was Curon Wyn Davies, who was studying at Jesus College, Cambridge. His timeline tells me he joined on 31 May 2005. He has dug up a real gem, the British Facebook song. With lyrics like "poke me night or day", "looking for some random play", it feels like a relic of a bygone age, when Facebook was essentially a dating app for students.
Others who joined in 2005 and 2006 remember it being a real student phenomenon - "you had to have an 'ac.uk' address to join" - which may have given it an added cachet, especially for those still in school. Roaming the timeline of one of my younger BBC colleagues, who must have just left school in 2006, I found this: "Now addicted to Facebook, MySpace and MSN. Work has no chance."
But soon MySpace and MSN, along with Bebo and Friends Reunited, were dwindling away as Facebook spread beyond universities to, well, everyone. Parents began joining to keep in touch with their offspring.
One Facebook friend tells me she joined in May 2006 - "Lost my son who'd gone on a two day bender, so I joined Facebook to put out an APB and track him down. It worked: 'Oh Mum you're so embarrassing'."
By the spring of 2007 even someone as old as me was joining (for professional purposes, you understand). I made a piece for BBC Radio 4's Today Programme on whether social networking was for the more mature person - and listened as one of the more mature presenters introduced it to listeners as "Facepack".
About the same time another middle-aged man, Chris Ward, joined up. Later, his daughter followed him onto Facebook. He says, "At one stage we had to moderate her usage as she was using it ALL the time - but now goes nowhere near it. Snapchat and Instagram are everything - which seems to support the recent reports on losing teen audience…"
Well, maybe. But ever since I joined Facebook it has been going out of fashion. Early in 2008, it seemed "everyone" was moving to this new thing called Twitter. Then an infestation of advertising was going to send everyone to places where they would not be bombarded with messages.
And every time Facebook changed its look, and its byzantine privacy settings, there were howls of outrage and threats to abandon it for something better.
As for me, I've had an on-off relationship with Facebook over the years - first bewitched by the excitement of this new means of communication, then bored by the constant flow of inane updates and annoyed by the shouty requests to try this game or that new feature.
I now spend most of my time with another social network which gives me a better feel for what's happening minute by minute. But I return to Facebook reasonably frequently to see what old friends and family are up to, and to share my life with a smaller circle than on that other network.
Facebook is entering middle-age like many of its users - but that can be a comfortable and very prosperous time of life.
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A chronology of key events:
| circa 1100 BC - Phoenicians settle the north African coast. The city of Carthage, near the site of present-day Tunis, becomes a naval power.
146 BC - Carthage falls to the Romans.
439 AD - Vandals invade; Roman buildings and artefacts are destroyed.
600s - Arabs conquer the territory of present-day Tunisia.
909 - Berbers wrest the region from the Arabs.
Ottoman Empire
1600s - Tunisia becomes part of the Turkish Ottoman empire, but has a high degree of autonomy.
1800s - French and Turkish designs on Tunisia force it to tread a careful path.
1881 - French troops occupy Tunis. France controls economic and foreign affairs; Tunisia is a French protectorate from 1883.
1934 - Habib Bourguiba founds the pro-independence Neo-Dustour Party
1942 - World War II: German troops arrive to resist allied forces in Algeria. Allied forces drive German, Italian troops out in 1943.
Independence
1956 20 March - Tunisia becomes independent with Bourguiba as prime minister.
1957 - The monarchy is abolished and Tunisia becomes a republic.
1961 - Tunisia says French forces must leave their base in Bizerte. Fighting breaks out. France pulls out of Bizerte in 1963, after long-running talks.
1981 - First multi-party parliamentary elections since independence. President Bourguiba's party wins by a landslide.
1985 - Israel raids Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) HQ in Tunis; 60 people are killed. The raid is in response to the killing by the PLO of three Israeli tourists in Cyprus.
1987 - Bloodless palace coup: Prime Minister Zine El Abidine Ben Ali has President Bourguiba declared mentally unfit to rule and takes power himself.
1989 - Ben Ali wins presidential elections. He goes on to be re-elected four more times, the last time in 2009.
1999 - First multi-party presidential elections; Ben Ali wins a third term.
Synagogue bombed
2002 April - 19 people - 11 of them German tourists - are killed in a bomb explosion at a synagogue in the resort of Djerba; Al-Qaeda claims responsibility.
2002 May - President Ben Ali wins a referendum on constitutional changes, paving the way for his fourth term.
2002 September - Jailed leader of Communist Workers' Party, Hamma Hammami, is freed on health grounds. He had been accused of being in an illegal organisation and of inciting rebellion.
2004 October - President Ben Ali wins a fourth term with 94% of the vote.
2005 July - Parliament introduces an upper house - the Chamber of Councillors - which is dominated by the ruling party.
2005 November - Tunisia hosts a UN conference on the global information society. Authorities deny that police have harassed journalists and other delegates.
2006 - October - Authorities launch a campaign against the Islamic headscarves worn by some women.
Tunisia moves to close its embassy in Qatar in protest at alleged bias by the Qatar-based al-Jazeera TV channel. The channel broadcast remarks by veteran Tunisian dissident Moncef Marzouki in which he called for peaceful resistance to the Tunisian government.
2006 December - The Progressive Democratic Party (PDP), the main opposition party, elects a woman as leader - a first for Tunisia. She is May Eljeribi.
2007 January - Islamist militants and security forces clash in Tunis. Twelve people are killed. Interior Minister Rafik Belhadj Kacem says the Salafist militants had come from Algeria.
2009 February - French court sentences German convert to Islam to 18 years over attack on Djerba synagogue in 2002. Walid Nouar, brother of suicide bomber, got 12 years for his part in al-Qaeda attack.
2009 July - Police charge nine men, including two air-force officers, with plotting to kill US servicemen during joint military exercises.
Arab Spring
2010 December - Protests break out over unemployment and political restrictions, and spread nationwide.
2011 January - President Ben Ali goes into exile amid continuing protests.
2011 February - Prime Minister Ghannouchi resigns, responding to demands by demonstrators calling for a clean break with the past.
2011 May - Curfew imposed amid fresh street protests.
2011 October - Parliamentary elections. Ennahda Islamist party wins, but falls short of an outright majority.
2011 December - Human rights activist Moncef Marzouki elected president by constituent assembly, Ennahda leader Hamadi Jebali sworn in as prime minister.
2012 May - Hundreds of Salafi Islamic extremists clash with security forces and attack a police station in Jendouba in a dispute over Salafi attacks on alcohol sellers.
2012 June - The government imposes an overnight curfew in eight areas following riots by Islamists against an art exhibition. One man died after being shot in the head.
2012 August - Thousands protest in Tunis against moves by Islamist-led government to reduce women's rights. Draft constitution refers to women as "complementary to men", whereas 1956 constitution granted women full equality with men.
2013 February - Prime Minister Jebali resigns after Ennahda party rejects his proposals to form a government of technocrats after the killing of an opposition anti-Islamist leader. Ennahda rejects opposition allegations that it was behind the killing of Chokri Belaid, whose death prompted violent protests.
2013 May - At least one person is killed in clashes between police and Salafi Islamists of the Ansar al-Sharia group in the Tunis suburb of Ettadhamen, where it was holding a meeting. Police also clashed with protesters in the city of Kairouan, where the government had banned an earlier Ansar al-Sharia meeting on security grounds.
2013 July - Assassination of opposition politician Mohamed Brahmi prompts mass demonstrations, a general strike and calls for the government to resign.
2013 December - After months of wrangling, Ennahda and mainly secular opposition agree on appointment of Mehdi Jomaa as head of interim government.
2014 January - Parliament passes the country's first constitution since President Ben Ali was ousted in 2011.
Prime minister-designate Mehdi Jomaa forms cabinet of independents and technocrats, to govern until new elections.
2014 February - The government says the suspected assassin of opposition politician Chokri Belaid has been killed in an anti-terrorist operation.
2014 March - President Marzouki lifts state of emergency imposed in 2011 during ouster of Zine el Abidine Ben Ali.
2014 October - Nidaa Tounes, which unites secularists, trade unionists, liberals and some players from the Ben Ali era, wins largest bloc of seats in parliamentary election, overtaking the Islamist Ennahda.
2014 December - Nidaa Tounes candidate Beji Caid Essebsi becomes president after decisively beating outgoing president Moncef Marzouki in run-off elections.
2015 March - Islamic State extremist group claims responsibility for an attack by three gunmen on the Bardo Museum in Tunis, in which 21 people, mainly foreign tourists, were killed.
2015 June - Islamic State gunman kills 38 people, mainly tourists, on beach at resort of Sousse, in Tunisia's worst terror attack. Government announces closure of extremist mosques.
2015 October - National Dialogue Quartet receives Nobel Peace Prize for helping transition to democracy. Made up of General Labour Union, Confederation of Industry, Trade and Handicrafts, Human Rights League, and Order of Lawyers.
2017 May - Demonstrations against proposed economic reconciliation law that would grant amnesty to businessmen and civil servants accused of corruption under former regime.
2017 April - Morocco and Algeria become embroiled in a diplomatic row over a group of Syrian refugees stranded on their common border.
2017 May-June - Protesters close oil pipeline valves as part of demonstrations demanding job creation and development in poorer inland areas.
2019 October - Retired law professor Kais Saied wins presidential election on an anti-corruption platform.
2020 September - Technocratic government formed to reform public finances.
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The police came at dawn on Monday. | By Emmanuel IgunzaBBC News, Mombasa
They swept into the Musa and Sakina mosques here in the Kenyan city of Mombasa, searching for incriminating material and arresting many of those they found.
Two days later, I witnessed officers closing a large padlock on the gates of the Swafaa mosque, as it became the third mosque accused of links with Islamist militants to be shut down.
Yellow police tape with the words "Crime Scene" is now wrapped around the entrances of all three places of worship.
This all follows an announcement in September when, in a rural town in central Kenya, the head of the Criminal Investigation Department, Muhoro Ndegwa, said the government would shut down mosques associated with Muslim radicals.
Back then no-one took the announcement seriously. Not even Muslim leaders.
Some dared him to act on his words. A local newspaper tucked a short story into its inside pages.
And that was about it.
But now this.
A huge contingent of heavily armed police stands guard, 24 hours a day, outside the Musa, Sakina and Swafaa mosques.
Worshippers have been told to go elsewhere.
Surprisingly, police have met little direct resistance from the radical youth, or the Muslim leadership in Mombasa. But at least three people were killed when angry Muslim youths went on a rampage after the police raids, attacking civilians with machetes.
Police now say they have their eyes set on a fourth mosque.
They say their actions are aimed at restoring peace in Mombasa, but the effect has been to unsettle the general public. There is an air of uncertainty and tension here.
'Too little, too late'
Locals are unsure how and when the radicals will react. The anger and motivation is already there. And there is a precedent.
In February, police raided the Musa mosque, once controlled by radical cleric Aboud Rogo, who was killed in August 2012.
Violent protests followed that raid. Muslim youths engaged police in running battles all day, killing one officer by slitting his throat.
Memories of that day have stayed with many people here.
From my conversations with local journalists, politicians, businessmen and ordinary residents, there is a feeling that the police action this week, though bold, may be too little too late for the local economy.
Tourist numbers - already depressed - have taken a big hit because of rising insecurity and the threat of militant attacks, which are very real here.
Local businesses are suffering and industry leaders have been going from meeting to meeting trying to find ways of wooing back tourists.
With no clear answers to hand, people here are resigned to the fact that things will probably get worse in Mombasa, before they get better.
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Ask about change in Saudi Arabia. | Lyse DoucetChief international correspondent@bbclysedouceton Twitter
The reply used to be: it will come, in its own way and in its own time, in the conservative kingdom.
It was another way of saying it would take a long time - and might never happen.
But, in Saudi Arabia now, talk of change is measured in months.
"I made a bet with a male colleague that the ban on women driving would end in the first six months of this year, and he said it would happen in the second half," a successful Saudi businesswoman says to me over lunch in the capital, Riyadh.
"But now I think it will happen early next year, and apply only to women over 40," she adds.
That's a prediction you hear in Riyadh's royal circles too. Some even say younger women will be allowed to drive before too long.
Change on every front is still slow and cautious in a culture where ultra-conservative religious authorities wield great influence, and many Saudis want to hold on to their old ways of living.
But an accelerating pace is largely being forced on Saudi rulers and society by a dramatic change in fortune for the world's biggest oil producer.
The crash in world prices for Saudi Arabia's black gold halved its revenues a few years ago and now shapes the hard choices and changes it must make in many parts of life here.
"It's been a one engine jet for decades," is how John Sfakianakis of the Gulf Research Center explains a country that depends on oil and gas for 90% of its income.
"Now it needs multiple engines."
Enter a new master plan, grandly titled Vision 2030, which was unveiled with great fanfare last year.
It's stamped with the imprimatur of the 31-year-old Deputy Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman, who crafted the ambitious blueprint with a cast of highly paid foreign consultants.
The deputy crown prince and those around him know that someday oil wells will run dry and, even before that, most people will be driving electric cars.
"It's absolutely necessary to get to Vision 2030 and our objectives," says the country's powerful Oil Minister Khalid al-Falih.
The former CEO of the state oil giant, Aramco, the world's biggest oil company, Mr al-Falih even has the need to diversify written into his new title. He's the minister of energy, industry and mineral resources.
"Whether we get there in 2030, whether we get some of them in 2025, some of them in 2030, some of them in 2035, we'll see," he explains in a nod to a master plan with demanding benchmarks for every ministry.
Saudi editor and writer Khaled Maeena points to a new accountability starting to emerge.
"Everybody is on the go, ministers bureaucrats and all, looking over their shoulders not to make mistakes," he says.
Those at the top, he adds, must "lead by example".
Salaries and lavish perks have been slashed in government jobs. The private sector is expected to provide one of the big engines for growth. It's still not up to speed.
"We're not hiring now," asserts a Saudi business executive who oversees a vast conglomerate of companies. "And we're not selling to the government unless we're sure we'll get paid for our goods."
"Vision 2030 is unlikely to reach its destination in 2030," a sceptical Saudi statistician replies when I ask for his view. Like most Saudis who criticise, he asks not to use his name.
"But at least there is a vision, and this time there are practicalities about how to achieve it," he adds, in a reference to previous schemes which never went anywhere.
"This is la la land," was the even more scathing assessment of another consultant. "Is there a bureaucracy able to implement it and a readiness at the top to change their own lives?"
The young deputy crown prince driving this plan, who is seen as the favourite son of 81-year-old King Salman, knows there's another clock fuelling pressure for change.
Two-thirds of Saudis are his age or younger.
Hundreds of thousands of them, men and women, were educated at the best western universities thanks to a generous scholarship programme started by the former King Abdullah.
Now they're back, looking for work but also ways to spend their weekends in an austere culture where even cinemas are banned,
Under the rules, men can only sit with women if they are dining with their female relatives, or "families" as that section is known.
But even since my last visit about a year ago, small but significant steps are visible.
Gone from the streets of the capital are the notorious religious police, the Mutawa, who used to roam in a mission to "prevent vice and promote virtue" and were often accused of zealously abusing their powers. The deputy crown prince is credited with sorting this out.
Wealthy Riyadh residents speak excitedly of newly opened restaurants where seating arrangements are less strict and music blares loudly.
"We need to see women drivers and cinemas here," insists Waleed al-Saedan when we meet at one of the few public places where the speed of life truly picks up.
"Dune bashing" in the desert provides one of the few legal thrills as Saudis rev the engines of sand buggies and SUVs to careen down the soft slopes of sand.
As is so often the case here, it's usually a men-only adventure.
But a new General Entertainment Authority is on the case. Despite its stern title, the people who run it are on a mission to bring some fun to Saudi lives, albeit within limits. No one is suggesting drinking and dancing.
"My mission is to make people happy," asserts the authority's chairman Ahmed al-Khatib, whose own serious demeanour is quickly brightened by a smile.
A calendar of some 80 events ranging from art festivals to light shows and live music concerts is carefully prepared and implemented to avoid any backlash which could put the whole project at risk.
"We will definitely provide things for the more open people and we will provide activities and things for the more conservative people," Mr al-Khatib explains, choosing his words carefully.
Opening up more social freedoms isn't just about providing more fun.
"Seventy billion riyals are being spent by Saudis on holidays abroad," laments a Saudi tour operator who is trying to tempt Saudis to spend more of their time and money at home instead of fleeing to the bright lights of Dubai or London.
More profound changes like political reform, tackling a questionable human rights record, or easing a web of restrictions on women's lives aren't on the agenda.
And at the same time as happiness is on the agenda, so is pain.
This is a country where people have always lived with cheap petrol, without taxes, and free water and electricity.
Now subsidies are being cut and a sales tax introduced. A new "Citizen's Account" will help lighten the burden for poorer families, but Saudis are having to juggle their own finances now.
"Saudis have taken too much for granted for too long," insists Nadia al-Hazza, an engineer who used to work in the oil and gas sector who is now helping to get women involved in Vision 2030.
She starts her presentations with a famous mantra from former US President John F Kennedy: "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country."
So now Saudis are also being asked to do more, and faster, than they've ever been used to.
"We're like a turtle on wheels," says political observer Hassan Yassin. "We're moving in a faster way to try to meet local demands and 21st Century obligations."
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The basics | Northern Ireland uses the Single Transferable Vote (STV) system to elect members of the Northern Ireland Assembly, local councils and members of the European Parliament.
Here's how the system works, with an example of how the outcome was calculated last time round.
Under STV, candidates are elected according to the share of vote they receive, the size of the electorate, and the number of seats to be filled.
Voters rank candidates in order of preference, giving each a number. They can choose as many or as few as they like.
Next, the 'quota' has to be worked out, which establishes the minimum number of votes a candidate requires to be elected.
In Northern Ireland, a formula known as the 'Droop Quota' is used.
This is calculated by dividing the total number of valid voting papers cast, by the number of seats to be filled plus one, and then adding one.
Candidates who exceed the quota are elected straightaway.
Surplus votes, i.e. those above the quota, are then transferred to the other candidates.
If any seats then remain to be filled, the lowest-ranked candidates are eliminated and their second and lower preferences are redistributed to the remaining candidates.
The process continues in this way until all the seats are filled.
In the European election, with just three seats to be elected, the counting process may only last a few rounds.
In local elections, where most councils have 40 seats and Belfast has 60, many more rounds of counting will take place to decide the outcome.
Each council is divided into District Electoral Areas (DEAs), which count the ballots for councillors representing that particular area.
Advanced example
To illustrate how STV works - and some of the complications - here is how Northern Ireland's three MEPs were elected in 2009.
There were 484,572 valid votes cast, and three seats to be filled. The quota was set at 121,144 (that is 484,572÷(3+1)+1)
As Sinn Féin's Bairbre de Brun won enough first preference votes to exceed the quota, she was elected straightaway.
Her 'surplus' first preferences were 5,040 (126,184 - 121,144)
Under STV rules, because her 5,040 surplus was less than the gap between Steven Agnew and Ian Parsley, and also less than the difference of their votes combined and next placed candidate Jim Allister, Agnew and Parsley were eliminated and their votes transferred.
Still with us? We continue to the next round.
All of Agnew and Parsley's ballots were then checked for second preferences. The outcome was:
So after the second round, no other candidate had managed to exceed the quota.
Last placed Jim Allister was then eliminated, and his second preferences redistributed.
In this third round, Jim Nicholson received 37,942 transferred votes from Jim Allister, taking him over the quota and securing his European Parliament seat.
But in a final twist - even if Nicholson's 11,113 and Bairbre De Brun's 5,040 surplus votes had all gone to Alban Maginness, he would still not have reached Diane Dodds' total.
Therefore, Diane Dodds was declared winner of the third and final seat - despite not reaching the 121,144 quota.
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Sleepy Boston is Brexit country. | By James CookChief News Correspondent for The Nine
Three quarters of voters in this Lincolnshire town cast their ballots to leave the EU, the highest rate in the UK.
Now many are fed up.
"I just wish it would hurry up and happen," says Kelly Coombs, with exasperation.
The greengrocer is proudly hawking "English cherries" from her fruit stall in the local market. Her wares are sweet but mention Brexit and the mood turns sour.
"We've been waiting and waiting and waiting and it's demoralising," she tells BBC Scotland's The Nine programme.
Locals call this county the vegetable basket of England but since the EU enlargement of 2004, when eight eastern European nations plus Malta and Cyprus joined the trade bloc, much of the produce has been picked and packaged by immigrants.
Ms Coombs, who says she pines for the "halcyon days" of the 1940s and 50s, insists her vote for Brexit had "absolutely nothing to do with immigration", although she immediately adds: "We do need to have a limit on that."
She goes on to contrast skilled labourers who want to work with others who, she says "sleep rough, throw beer down [their] necks and just take money".
So why did she vote to leave?
"Purely so that we go back to ruling our own country," she explains.
Which country, I ask.
"England," she replies instinctively, before quickly adding "UK, UK". She feels the need to clarify because "I can hear your Scottish voice".
And what if Brexit led to independence for Scotland?
Ms Coombs says she is relaxed about that.
"I don't think we should dabble in your politics and your economy so much. Same with Northern Ireland," she says.
The result of the European Union referendum on 23 June 2016 highlighted stark differences between the four parts of the UK.
England and Wales voted to leave the EU while voters in Scotland and Northern Ireland signalled their desire to remain.
This has apparently led to some confusion, with one voter in Lincolnshire telling us he was under the impression that Scotland would be staying as an EU member while England left. In fact, the decision applies to the United Kingdom as a whole.
Polling suggests that a strong correlation between English national identity and support for Brexit lies behind the differences indicated by the polling.
"National identity mattered strongly in this referendum," observes Jan Eichhorn of Edinburgh University, who asserts in an article published by the LSE that it is "rarely talked about to the same extent as questions of class or even age, although the divide is much more dramatic".
Separately, a recent opinion poll for YouGov sent shockwaves rippling through the constitutional debate when it indicated that a majority of Conservative and Unionist party members prioritise leaving the EU over preserving the union.
Some 63% of respondents said they would rather Brexit took place even if it led to Scottish independence, and 59% expressed the same view about Brexit leading to Northern Ireland leaving the UK.
Paula Cooper embodies both of these positions.
She is a Conservative county councillor who runs Boston's bubble car museum, a curious collection of charming vehicles made by firms such as the very English Bond and Frisky, and the very German Messerschmitt and Heinkel.
There is an air of nostalgia here harking back to a time with less immigration and much less sensitivity to race, as the Golliwogs on display and on sale suggest.
'Jog on' Scotland
"I think the politically correct brigade has made us almost petrified to say 'well, I'm English' because then you might be offending somebody," she says, adding, "I think people could do with stiffening up a tad and not be quite so ready to be offended.
"You know, if you're nationalistic then, 'oh you're right wing, you're dreadful', and maybe we need a little bit more national pride and a bit more of actually looking after our own identity."
A bit more nationalism, I ask.
"I don't think it would go adrift," replies Mrs Cooper. "It's a word that's been much abused."
And would Scottish independence be a price worth paying for Brexit?
"I'd hesitate to say anything like 'jog on', but that would be my first thought," she replies.
Jog on, did you say?
"Yes I did. If they feel that's the best position for them as a nation, as a country then probably that's the best thing they could do.
"It would be an awful shame, but we haven't always been united in the British Isles."
Instead of jogging on, we took to the water for a trip on a tourist boat down the River Witham to the cathedral city of Lincoln.
Among the passengers enjoying a refreshing breeze and a bacon butty is Pete Lubrano.
Now in his 60s, he was born in India to Italian parents and has lived in London since the age of five.
Mr Lubrano voted to remain but now reluctantly accepts that the democratic will of the UK is to leave.
So does he think English nationalism has played a part in Brexit?
"Unfortunately, I think it was a big part of it," he says. "You know, I think the spin was on the foreigners, so-called, coming over here 'taking our jobs' and so on.
"In reality they're just doing a job and they're contributing to the wealth of this country and they're doing work that the British people don't want to do, basically.
"I suppose there's always been that underlying nationalism. I think it's come more to the front now because certain political figures have stirred that up."
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President: Edgar Lungu
| Edgar Lungu was sworn in as president in January 2015 after winning a narrow victory in an election called after the death of his predecessor Michael Sata.
He won just over 48% of the vote, compared with nearly 47% for the opposition candidate, Hakainde Hichilema. The election commission rejected opposition complaints of irregularities.
Mr Lungu, the former defence minister from the ruling Patriotic Front (PF), took over the helm for the remainder of the late president Sata's term until a general election scheduled for September 2016.
At his swearing-in he told supporters: "I am very honoured that you have decided to make me your servant."
He has vowed to continue the policies of his predecessor, including a contentious mining tax regime.
Mr Lungu, who has a condition affecting his oesophagus, had surgery in South Africa in March 2015. He collapsed at an event in Lusaka the month before.
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Head of state: King Willem-Alexander
| King Willem-Alexander became the first Dutch male monarch in more than a century in April 2013 when his mother Beatrix abdicated to end a 33-year reign.
The generational change in the House of Orange-Nassau gave the Netherlands a moment of celebration and pageantry at a time of recession brought on by the European economic crisis.
The much-loved Beatrix ended her reign in a nationally televised signing ceremony as thousands of orange-clad people cheered outside. Her retirement followed in the tradition of her mother and grandmother.
Willem-Alexander's popular Argentine-born wife became Queen Maxima and their eldest daughter, Catharina-Amalia, became Princess of Orange and first in line to the throne.
The king, a water management specialist, has said he will bring a less formal touch to the monarchy.
Prime minister: Mark Rutte
Mark Rutte and his liberal People's Party for Freedom and Democracy have led a series of coalition governments since 2010, with partners ranging from the centre-left Labour Party to the conservative Christian Democratic Appeal.
He is the first liberal prime minister since 1918, ending nearly a century of domination by Labour and the Christian Democrats.
The March 2017 election saw his party emerge as the largest in parliament, but a relatively strong showing for the populist right-wing Party for Freedom of Geert Wilders has led to an impasse in forming a new government.
None of the mainstream parties with work with Mr Wilders, and differences over issues as diverse as climate change, immigration and medical ethics are hindering the formation of a coalition. Mark Rutte says he wants to form a majority government, but may have to govern as a minority prime minister with the conditional support of other parties.
His administrations have presided over tough spending cuts to comply with EU deficit targets in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, as well as heated debates on immigration.
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"Oh darling, darling..." | By Alan ConnorBBC News
These sound like words from a straightforward love song, but everyone who heard it performed in St George's Chapel on Saturday knew that Stand By Me was more than that.
And there's a reason that the song sounded right coming from the gospel singers of the Kingdom Choir. Here's a line from the book of Psalms that sounds very much like the second verse:
"Therefore will not we fear, though the Earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea."
Royal wedding 2018: The music behind the ceremony
Stand By Me sounds like gospel because it was once a hymn which adapted that psalm. It was published in 1905 by Charles Albert Tindley, though it may go further back into the black American oral tradition.
A 'civil rights anthem'
Tindley was a slave's son who volunteered as a janitor at an Episcopalian church in Philadelphia. He taught himself Greek through a correspondence course and learned Hebrew at a local synagogue, and eventually became the church's pastor, addressing its mixed-race congregations much like Michael Curry, who delivered the address at Saturday's wedding. He also wrote a collection of gospel numbers.
Flash-forward to 1960. Ben E. King - who knew his gospel - had left his successful band The Drifters over a contractual dispute, and he was wavering between chasing a solo career and asking for a job in his father's restaurant.
One evening, in his bedroom "with a cheap guitar", he noodled about, finding an update of Tindley's song. Proud of what he'd done, he sent it to his old band. "We don't need it," they replied.
So it was that, when King got a recording contract, and had a quarter of an hour spare at the end of a studio session, his producers asked whether he had anything knocking around to fool around with.
He sang Stand By Me acapella; everyone set to work. The producers - serial hit-makers Lieber and Stoller - added a Brazilian-inspired baiaó rhythm.
They upended a snare drum and scraped a brush across the wire for that scratchy sound which is one of the song's many hooks; as King recalled it, Lieber and Stoller were always seeking "that one little thing that your ear would pick up on and would not turn you loose".
A young Phil Spector was also there, contributing ideas.
Then they decided to add an orchestra. The sessions ran into overtime, they got into trouble with the record label… until it became a hit.
In fact, it's found success many times over, constantly adapted to new ends. In the movie that borrowed its title, it's about the strength of friendship among 12-year-old boys; in T-Rex's version, it's about unity among the hippie children.
But in the original — and in the hymn that inspired it — something else is going on. Historian Craig Werner says that in the context of 1960s America, a black man singing the words "No, I won't be afraid" is "a classic case of political masking".
In other words, Stand By Me became a covert protest song, sung alongside We Shall Overcome - which was also based on one of Tindley's hymns.
Chuck Scruggs, a black American DJ, recalled putting the song to political use. "I'd go from a message song like [The Impressions'] Keep On Pushing to, say, Stand By Me. You see what I mean?… Stand by me people, cause we gotta keep on pushing for our freedom."
For many, this ballad is also, in fact, a civil-rights anthem.
That's why Harry and Meghan's choice of song meant more than if they'd gone with, say, Ed Sheeran's Shape Of You. And the performance by the Kingdom Choir takes Stand By Me back further still, re-infusing it with the defiance as well as the devotion of gospel.
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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"Right, who's next?" | By Carl RobertsBBC Wales political reporter
Nigel Farage is part of the way through a day which will eventually see him doing 24 interviews ahead of the UKIP Conference in Westminster.
In fact, by the end of the day he'll be defending himself against accusations that he was a racist and a fascist during his school days at Dulwich College in the early 1980s, but he doesn't know this yet.
It is also a full 24 hours before the conference is overshadowed by a row involving UKIP MEP Godfrey Bloom, which led to the party whip being withdrawn.
As he's doing so many interviews I remind Mr Farage that I'm from BBC Wales so he has some idea what I might want to talk to him about - and he tells me about a summer spent on Anglesey campaigning in the Ynys Mon by-election.
He's also keen to tell me about the excellent sea fishing off the Lleyn Peninsula.
I'll take his word for it - my fishing experience ended after a fruitless afternoon at a trout farm near Caerwys in Flintshire in the late 1980s.
We start the interview - I have to be brisk as I'll be replaced by the BBC Southampton reporter in exactly five minutes.
I ask him if his party still want to abolish the Welsh assembly, and he gives me an equally brief reply.
"No," says Mr Farage.
"This was old UKIP thinking - we should pretend devolution isn't happening and shouldn't be happening and under my leadership that has very much reversed.
"Devolution has happened and there are two referendums in Wales that have confirmed that, so we should just jolly well get on and accept the fact that the whole of the United Kingdom is changing.
"We're moving towards a more federal model, that doesn't mean that we can't ask for more devolution in the sense that there are maybe powers in Cardiff that could go out locally but, no, we accept it."
Earlier this summer the UKIP MEP for Wales John Bufton threatened to set up a new political party to campaign for the abolition of the assembly if UKIP officially changed its policy.
"Well, very good luck to him." said Mr Farage.
'Phenomenal opportunity'
"UKIP's been going 20 years. It's taken us 20 years to get where we are. If anybody thinks you can just head off and form a new political party, and it's an easy thing to do, they've got another thing coming."
During his conference speech on Friday Mr Farage promised that UKIP would cause a "political earthquake" in the elections to the European Parliament next May. He expects the party to top the polls across the UK - and that includes in Wales.
"I honestly think that we've got a phenomenal opportunity next year in a European election to send this very, very strong message," Mr Farage added.
"It's 40 years ago that people were asked the European questions.
"My parents generation we're asked about a common market, it's now a political union. It's high time we had another go. And for that reason I think we could well surprise people in Wales."
The Sunday Politics is on BBC One Wales at 13:30 BST on Sunday.
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It's May 2019. | Dominic CascianiHome affairs correspondent@BBCDomCon Twitter
A small crowd surrounds a mobile screen on the Brinnington council estate in Stockport. They've gathered to hear Tommy Robinson who wants to become their Member of the European Parliament. He says he's speaking for them - standing up against the elites in politics and the media.
"They don't live where we live. They don't experience what we experience," he says.
But while Tommy Robinson was rousing the clutch of onlookers in this deprived corner of Greater Manchester, his four-bedroom country home was on the market for £900,000. The estate agency pictures show a Range Rover parked on the driveway, a hot tub in the garden and a TV above the bath.
The property remains on the market, but Robinson's home will be a prison cell for the immediate future. On Thursday, he was jailed for nine months after being found guilty of contempt of court.
As he was taken to the cells Robinson winked to his supporters sitting in the public galley.
His crime had been to livestream, via Facebook, footage of defendants arriving at court in a sexual grooming trial. The action - a direct challenge to the mainstream media - jeopardised a court case and broke the cornerstone rule of English justice that guarantees a fair trial.
Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, hates the mainstream media. It's because, he says, they lie about him and conceal the truth about Islam, sexual grooming gangs and the "forgotten" people of England. As he says these things, he swerves from apparent outrage to cheeky jokes. Help me, he asks his followers. I speak for you.
Last week, outside the courthouse where he had been found guilty, he repeated the rhetoric. Flashing a winning smile to a crowd who chanted his name, Robinson appeared defiant.
An apprentice engineer
Tommy Robinson, a married father-of-three, grew up in Luton, Bedfordshire. His double-barrelled surname evolved from his natural father leaving home and his mother's second husband stepping in to raise the two-year-old. He won a prized place as an apprentice aircraft engineer at Luton Airport and looked set for a successful career - until it came crashing down after a drunken night out. Yaxley-Lennon had got into a fight with a man who turned out to be an off-duty police officer. He was jailed for a year.
Tommy Robinson's key convictions:
Contempt of court findings:
On his release, he went back to his old life of drinking and messing around with his football mates. But he also worked very hard, alongside his father, as a plumber. He earned a good living, renovating properties before selling them on. He opened a tanning salon in Luton. Times were good.
He also nurtured a growing interest in politics, driven by his perception of what was happening in his home town. The extremist al-Muhajiroun network - whose followers have been at the centre of numerous terrorism plots - had a powerbase in Luton. It's debatable whether Yaxley-Lennon would have become Tommy Robinson had they not been on his home turf. Yaxley-Lennon and his friends were concerned that police were doing little or nothing to combat the threat of "radical Islam" on their streets.
In March 2009, al-Muhajiroun activists disrupted a homecoming parade of Royal Anglian Regiment soldiers returning from Afghanistan. They called soldiers murderers and the incident made national news. Yaxley-Lennon and his football friends had organised a counter-demonstration. The result were some clashes in the town - and the the creation of the English Defence League.
Yaxley-Lennon and his closest confidants realised they could build support for their cause across Britain, by using Facebook. There was no membership list and no clear aim - only a desire to take on "radical Islam". According to Yaxley-Lennon in his self-published autobiography, it would be the start of "years of mad laughs with the lads". As media attention grew, and he emerged as the EDL's de facto leader, he decided he needed a pseudonym. At first he called himself Wayne King - a schoolboy joke he initially got away with in a radio interview.
Ultimately, he borrowed the name of the organiser of Luton Town's football hooligan firm, Tommy Robinson. It stuck.
In September of that year, Robinson complained to BBC News of town centres "plagued by Islamic extremists".
"Those are our town centres, and we want them back."
At demonstrations, the chant "Muslim bombers, off our streets", could often be heard. The EDL was a new far-right front - but "Tommy" denied he was racist. He freely admitted to having flirted with the British National Party until he discovered they objected to his black friends. Later he was convicted of assaulting one EDL follower whom he accused of being a neo-Nazi infiltrator - or as he put it at the time, "a degenerate mug". But he also perpetuated and spread far-right myths, such as a claim that Muslims are statistically on course to outnumber "Europeans" this century.
Each event appeared to draw a bigger crowd. By 2011 the group had gathered sufficient support to prompt police to close Luton town centre for a day to facilitate the EDL's "homecoming" protest. But Robinson's campaign was also unravelling because of his inability to control his followers or his own behaviour. Later that year he received a 12-month community rehabilitation order after a massive football brawl between supporters of his beloved Luton Town FC and those of Newport County. As the fists flew, he led his followers in a chant of "EDL till I die".
And in January 2013, Robinson was jailed for 10 months for travelling to the United States on someone else's passport in an attempt to sidestep an entry ban.
The time in prison began to take its toll. He began to question what he was doing. When he was released, Robinson quit the EDL, saying he no longer felt he could keep at bay extremist elements within the organisation. He told the BBC in October 2013 that he wanted to "lead the revolution against Islamist ideology" but not a revolution against Muslims.
Grooming gangs
But that apparent conversion, assisted by a Muslim-led anti-extremism think tank, didn't last long. In January 2014, Robinson was jailed again - this time for 18 months - for his part in a complicated mortgage fraud. When he was released, he appeared angrier - but also more focused. In a speech to the Oxford Union later that year, his target became clear. He focused on sexual grooming gangs from predominantly Asian backgrounds. He accused the police of facilitating "the rape of children" for 20 years because they were afraid of being called racist.
"We have a two-tier police force that treats crimes within the Muslim community differently," he said.
He became obsessed with his belief that Muslims were predisposed to violence because of the Koran. It was his ticket to a new way of making money. He attempted to set up a British wing of Germany's anti-Islam party Pegida. In one January 2016 speech in Denmark, he warned about a "military invasion" of Europe as hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees - many fleeing the Islamic State extremist group - sought asylum from war in their country.
This obsession coincided with the explosion in social media channels and mobile phone use that allowed anyone, anywhere to be a broadcaster, publisher and wannabe journalist - and the factors formed his ticket to making a lot of money.
Tommy Robinson predominantly used Twitter and Facebook to promote his "new era". His films and posts increasingly came with an appeal for donations via PayPal, bitcoin or other routes. And the cash came in. And once people were invested in Tommy - they'd come back for more.
Robinson, slowly but surely, became a leading far-right global brand. That attracted interest from across the Atlantic - and he struck gold.
The internet is awash with far-right and far-left websites, blogs and channels. One of the most successful on the right has been The Rebel Media, a Canadian outfit run by an arch conservative polemicist, Ezra Levant.
Levant has been accused in his home country of perpetrating a paranoid and delusional conspiracy theory. It is that the world's liberal elites are complicit in hiding the truth about Islam. He raises millions of dollars from his audience and substantial support from wealthy US backers. They include Robert Shillman, the head of a multi-billion-pound US technology firm.
Mr Levant employed Robinson and launched him in 2017 as The Rebel's "Shillman fellow" UK correspondent.
Material seen by the BBC indicates The Rebel was so well-financed that Robinson earned a salary that, at times, touched more than £10,000 a month - with additional funds for a three-person film-making team.
His brief was to produce provocative and emotional films that would enrage his audience by exposing the "truth" about liberal "elites". He'd highlight stories where he claimed white working class people in the UK were becoming second class citizens. While Robinson and The Rebel later parted in a row over his inability to raise enough cash for Levant's ambitions rather than himself, the film-making approach stuck.
"Left Behind": What makes people turn to the far-right?
Find out more about the ground-breaking BBC fact-based drama, The Left Behind,.
One film from 2018 concerned the killing of three London teenagers who were hit by a drunk-driver who was also using cannabis. The driver was Asian with a Hindu-heritage name. He pleaded guilty and was jailed.
But Tommy Robinson's film was headlined Three Boys: Tragedy or Terrorism? There had been no evidence of a terrorist motive. But that didn't stop him speculating.
"It's clear these families have been systematically failed and lied to by the police," he said in his piece to camera. "I can't be 100% certain that this was a terrorist attack. If this was a terrorist attack and cover-up, we could be looking at so many more terrorist attacks than we could ever have imagined."
The mother of one of the teenagers has since been part of demonstrations against the authorities, demanding the truth be told.
Along the way Robinson self-published a second book called Muhammad's Koran: Why Muslims Kill for Islam. With his co-author, he wrote: "If you are a Muslim, please put this book down. We do not wish you to become a killer because this book leads you to understand the doctrines and history of Islam more thoroughly."
Tommy Robinson's Facebook page - the centre of his publishing and fund raising - eventually accrued one million followers.
Some have sought to dismiss Tommy Robinson as a shouty former hooligan. But that is not a view shared by security chiefs. While the English Defence League faded, Brand Tommy became more and more trusted by his supporters. Darren Osborne, who drove a van into worshippers at a north London mosque in 2017 appeared to have been a follower.
Osborne had been shocked by a BBC drama about the sexual abuse of vulnerable girls by predominantly Asian men in Rochdale. He went online to find out more - and evidence at his trial revealed that a rambling note he left in the cab of his van was seemingly inspired by Tommy Robinson's words and causes.
Robinson, and his supporters, were enraged he was being accused indirectly of causing the attack. It lifted his new media profile further.
Then, in May 2017, he committed his first contempt of court. Robinson turned up at Canterbury Crown Court and filmed defendants in a grooming case. The judge said the filming could have derailed the trial. He sentenced Robinson to three months in prison, suspended for 18 months. But a year later Robinson was back, this time outside Leeds Crown Court, to do the same again.
He filmed for more than an hour, discussing a trial that was subject to reporting restrictions and approaching some of the defendants in confrontational scenes. The broadcast went out live to a Facebook audience of 10,000 viewers - and was watched 250,000 times overall. Robinson was arrested at the scene and the judge activated the Canterbury suspended sentence - and jailed him for another 10 months on top.
His supporters were outraged. Ezra Levant, chief of Rebel Media, organised a fund-raising campaign. And it worked.
The wealthy US-based Middle East Forum, which describes itself as working to "protect Western civilisation from the threat of Islamism" helped pay for lawyers. They won an appeal for Robinson to be released and the case to be reheard in full. At the same time, according to individuals with insider knowledge, the donations and online revenue rolled in and Tommy Robinson became personally wealthier than before.
Today, thanks to that hearing, we know Robinson nearly derailed the Leeds trial after judges at the Old Bailey revealed what happened next. There were attempts by the grooming gang defendants to have the trial stopped on the basis that a jury could no longer reach a fair verdict. One of the men even managed to get a hearing at the Court of Appeal that could have led to him being freed.
None of Robinson's supporters seemed to care about this.
They believed Robinson was being muzzled - that the man they were convinced was speaking up for victims, and them, was being denied his free speech.
In the 14 months since the Leeds incident, there have been eight London demonstrations in his support, claiming there is a conspiracy involving the government, police and media. There is no doubt that some of his supporters see him as a messiah. Outside the Old Bailey they have carried posters of him depicted as St George and also a lion. They have booed and spat at journalists and assaulted camera crews.
By late 2018, Robinson had been thrown off the major social media platforms for breaking hate speech rules. He was even banned from Paypal. He later revealed his income had fallen by 70%. The level of dedicated, rather than casual, support started to appear fragile.
And when he ran to be an MEP in the North West, he was humiliated - getting just 2% of the vote and losing his £5,000 deposit.
Deprived of the means to raising lots of cash, including from advertising around his films, he was literally begging for donations. He did so by presenting himself, as his autobiography has it, as the persecuted "enemy of the state". But his claimed persecution comes with a dark edge. When he was first in jail for the Leeds contempt in 2018, he wrote a letter to supporters:
"For a while now I've been sure that I will be murdered for opposing Islam… although now I sit here smiling with the belief that my murder would start a revolution," said Robinson.
His supporters have repeated similar claims. He is their martyr-in-the-making - albeit one who lives in a country house with a sunken hot tub.
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President: Klaus Iohannis
| Provincial mayor Klaus Iohannis inflicted a shock defeat on Prime Minister Victor Ponta in a presidential election run-off in November 2014.
Mr Ponta was leading in the opinion polls and had beaten Mr Iohannis, the centre-right mayor of the city of Sibiu in Transylvania, in the first round of voting.
But Mr Iohannis, who campaigned on an anti-corruption platform, won a decisive victory on a record turn-out.
The election may well have been decided by the votes of Romania's large and growing diaspora. Nearly 50 per cent of the ballots cast abroad were for Mr Iohannis, compared to just 16 percent for Mr Ponta.
Observers said that with several senior figures in Mr Ponta's formerly communist Social Democrats accused of corruption, Mr Iohannis appealed to voters with his reputation for reliability and honesty.
Klaus Iohannis is a former physics teacher who hails from the country's ethnic German community, which was persecuted under communist dictator Nicolae Ceaucescu.
He has been re-elected four times as mayor of Sibiu, and has developed a record for sound government in a region of the country that is booming economically.
Romania is the EU's second-poorest country, and much of the campaign focused on how to increase living standards.
Under Romania's system, the president is responsible for foreign and defence policy, and controls the appointment of prosecutors and the judiciary.
Prime Minister (designate): Mihai Tudose
Economy Minister Mihai Tudose took over as prime minister in June 2017 after a dispute in the governing Social Democratic Party forced out Sorin Grindeanu.
Party leader Liviu Dragnea, who is debarred from holding high office because of a conviction for electoral fraud, put forward his long-standing ally Mr Tudose as a way to prevent the collapse of the six-month-old government.
President Iohannis said he confirmed the appointment in order to maintain economic stability. Mr Tudose will then have 10 days to win parliamentary approval for his government.
Mr Grindeanu's appointment as head of a coalition government in January marked the return to power of the Social Democrats for the first time since anti-corruption riots forced them from office in November 2015.
But Mr Grindeanu never overcame public suspicion that he was trying to rein in the anti-corruption drive established by the previous non-party government.
More than 200,000 people came out onto the streets in February to force the government to back down over plan to decriminalise certain forms of corruption.
A power struggle between the prime minister and Mr Dragnea led the junior coalition party to withdraw support from the government, which then lost a vote of confidence in parliament.
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How do we meet the people we marry? | Prince Harry and Meghan Markle revealed they met in 2016 after being set up on a blind date by a mutual friend.
We heard your stories of finding love from blind dates, matchmaking and chance encounters.
'Took a punt'
Howie Jakeway met his wife Michelle when their mothers set them up on a blind date in October 2001.
Howie said he was "living the single life" in his late thirties when his mother and step-father befriended Michelle's parents in the Norfolk town to which they had recently retired.
"I was playing golf with my step-father and future mother-in-law when they told me Michelle was going to pick me up to go tenpin bowling in King's Lynn.
"I thought it will be something different. I'll go with the flow."
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Recalling their first date, Howie says "there was no awkwardness, it felt like we'd known each other for years."
Within three months, Michelle moved to Hertfordshire to be with Howie, and two years later they got married.
Howie says it was "out of character" for his mother to set him up.
"My mum just wanted me to settle down, that was her main driver. She took a punt, and it worked out."
Howie and Michelle have been married for 14 years, and now live in Perth, Australia, with their two young daughters.
'We did it first!'
On Remembrance Sunday, 2014, Rebecca Halliwell-Coutts was in a pub in Westminster with her military colleagues, when she was introduced to Robert by a mutual acquaintance.
Rebecca, a sergeant in Household Division, told the BBC it was "tradition" for service personnel to meet there.
She remembers Robert, a watch manager at West Yorkshire Fire Brigade, was wearing his formal fire service uniform and that he embodied "everything I had imagined I wanted".
"He had to get a train back to Yorkshire, and he left before we exchanged numbers. All I had was his first name. I doubted I'd ever see him again."
A year passed without any contact, until in the same pub on Remembrance Sunday weekend in 2015, the pair met again.
"I hadn't forgotten him and we both knew we should have acted when we first met."
This time the couple exchanged contact details and began dating. In 2016, Robert proposed in Paris.
"When I heard that Prince Harry and Meghan Markle were introduced by a mutual friend, I though 'we did it first!'"
'Pre-online dating'
Paula Knall decided to look for love in the lonely hearts column of her local paper in 2001.
"I was in the cinema watching Bridget Jones' Diary, and I burst into tears. I knew that if I didn't change something I would be that lonely women in her thirties sobbing."
Paula went home and spread the pages of the Bucks Herald on her living room floor and began highlighting adverts.
She quickly connected with Chris and after speaking a few times, they met at a cafe on the A1 where they "chatted for about five hours".
Chris' sister met her husband through a similar lonely hearts advert, and both couples have been "going strong ever since".
Paula told the BBC: "People are surprised when they find out we met through lonely hearts ads, but this was pre-online dating and I wanted to meet new people.
"They are even more surprised when I tell them two couples in the same family met this way!"
Paula and Chris got married in 2003, and Paula says "it has been plain sailing all the way".
By George Pierpoint, UGC and Social News
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What are these Pisa tests? | By Sean CoughlanBBC News education correspondent
Not keen on browsing 500+ pages of education test results? Reluctant to look at more tables than an Ikea factory....
Here's the short-attention span version.
Teenagers around the world take these tests, but it's education ministers who feel the heat.
Because these two-hour tests in maths, reading and science, taken by 500,000 15-year-old pupils, are used to create international league tables, comparing standards in different countries. Individual pupils don't get results, it's education systems.
The latest rankings run from Shanghai at the top to Peru at the bottom. The gap in scores between top and bottom is equivalent to six years of learning.
If you think you can do better you can try the test yourself.
The tests are run by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in Paris. The "Pisa" name stands for the Programme for International Student Assessment, a name chosen so that the acronym spells the same in English as in French. Unlike the OECD.
It's not just countries taking part. It also includes regional administrations, like Shanghai, which is bigger than most European countries. Although for the next tests in 2015 there will be a wider entry from more Chinese provinces.
Key points from 2012 tests
As more attention is paid to these tests, there's a mini-backlash of doubters questioning their validity.
There are claims against the methodology of the testing and more widely there are warnings against too much being read into the results.
Among the concerns are that political pressure to boost international rankings will force education systems to become more narrowly focused on these measures.
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King: Harald V
| Crown Prince Harald became king on the death of his father Olav V in 1991. Born in 1937, he fled with his mother and siblings to the United States after the German invasion of Norway in 1940, while his father and grandfather, the then King Haakon VII, joined the government in exile in London.
The royal family returned to Norway at the end of the war, and Prince Harald went on to study at the University of Oslo, the Norwegian Military Academy and Oxford University.
Like his father and grandfather, King Harald is a keen sportsman, and represented Norway with distinction as a yachtsman at various international events, including the Tokyo, Mexico and Munich Olympics.
He caused some controversy by insisting on marrying a commoner, contrary to the tradition of marrying a royal princess. He and Queen Sonja have two children, Princess Martha Louise and Crown Prince Haakon.
The king has clearly defined constitutional duties. Apart from being head of the armed forces and Church of Norway, he chairs the Council of State once a week. He appoints the government according to which party commands the largest number of seats in parliament, or else on the advice of the head of parliament and the prime minister of the day.
King Harald has continued the royal family's tradition of of unpretentious public duty, and serves as a symbol of the country's strong sense of national identity.
Prime minister: Erna Solberg
Erna Solberg heads a right-wing minority coalition government assembled following elections in September 2013.
Her government rules in a minority after failing to win over several small centrist parties. But minority governments are common in Nordic countries and her Conservative Party has enlisted the formal outside backing of the Liberals and the Christian Democrats to ensure stability.
Ms Solberg, Norway's second female prime minister, appointed women to half of the cabinet posts, in line with an unwritten rule about gender equality.
Nicknamed "Iron Erna" for her tough stance as local government minister in charge of asylum and regional development in 2001-2005, Ms Solberg took over leadership of the Conservative Party in 2004 and steered it to third place in the 2009 elections.
Her government has promised to lower taxes, reduce the economy's reliance on the vast oil sector, invest heavily in infrastructure and curtail immigration.
One of her coalition partners is the populist Progress Party, which entered the government for the first time after having been in opposition ever since its formation 40 years previously.
The Progress Party is in favour of tighter immigration controls and sweeping tax cuts.
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What now? It's happened. | Laura KuenssbergPolitical editor@bbclaurakon Twitter
A dreary night didn't discourage those celebrating in Parliament Square. We wake this morning out of the European Union. But we follow their rules until the end of the year, without a say.
We are separate after more than 40 years, but remember much of the status quo will hold for now - the UK and the EU, the awkward couple, finally divorced - but still sharing a house and the bills.
But what the prime minister hails as a new era, a bright new dawn, starts months of hard bargaining with our neighbours across the Channel.
The UK's requests: a free trade agreement, cooperation on security, and new arrangements for fishing are just some of the vital arguments that lie ahead.
Within days, Boris Johnson - and the EU too - will set out their opening positions. And at home, the government must hurry to adapt many of our systems that are plumbed into the EU. The prime minister is adamant that process must not run beyond the end of the year.
It's a deadline that focuses minds, but raises eyebrows. Getting meaningful agreements in place at that pace is not impossible, but hard to do.
That means while the biggest question is settled, particularly for business, uncertainty still hangs around.
But the prime minister believes the opportunity of Brexit is seeing beyond the framework of the EU. He hopes for more ability for the government to pursue its priorities at home. More freedom to act abroad - a smaller, but perhaps nimbler, partner.
And there will be fewer excuses for a British government if it fails to keep its huge promises.
Departure has been so controversial there will be plenty of rival politicians looking for early proof of failure.
In truth, the merits or mistakes of this decision will take years to show. The economy is expected to grow more slowly, but a country's value is not just measured in pounds and pence.
Brexit in a complete sense has always been hard to define. Today we will start to find out what it will really mean.
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Yes, in a word. | By Frank GardnerBBC security correspondent
There is no scientific way of accurately measuring how many people will be so incensed by President Trump's executive order on immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries that they feel compelled to carry out a violent act against a US or Western target. Perhaps dozens, perhaps none.
There is also no scientific way of measuring how many potential violent extremists have now been shut out of the US because of the order.
But one thing is clear: in the ever-shifting ideological battle to win hearts and minds, this is one-nil to the extremists of so-called Islamic State (IS).
Iran's Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, whose country is currently helping Iraqi forces drive out IS, said the US move would "be recorded in history as a great gift to extremists and their supporters".
He added that it "only serves to provide a fertile ground for more terrorist recruitment by deepening the ruptures and fault-lines which have been exploited by extremist demagogues".
In Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, a foreign ministry spokesman said it deeply regretted the move "because we believe it would affect the global fight against terrorism… It is wrong to link radicalism and terrorism with one particular religion".
Even America's closest ally, Britain, has been critical. Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson tweeted that in his personal view the move "is divisive, discriminatory and wrong".
Behind the scenes, where the ideological battle against violent extremism is fought in internet chatrooms, over anti-terrorist hotlines, and with tip-offs from the public, one effect of the immigration order will be to, at least temporarily, inhibit co-operation between the US and the very countries whose help it needs in fighting Islamic extremism.
Iraq, whose forces have undergone an extensive retraining programme with help from US advisers, has been quick to retaliate by imposing similar restrictions on US visitors.
At street level, anything that portrays the US government as being anti-Muslim - and that is exactly how this is going down in much of the Middle East - makes it harder to fight the narrative of IS and other extremists.
Largely obscured by the tumult and confusion over President Trump's Executive Order is one simple, compelling fact: the people whose actions bear the original blame for much of the mistrust and negative stereotyping of Muslims, on both sides of the Atlantic, are not the mainstream Muslim populations themselves.
It is the extremists from al-Qaeda, IS, al-Shabab and other affiliate groups who have waged violent jihad in the name of their common religion.
Through their actions, these extremists are looking to separate Muslims from non-Muslims and to create a gulf between them. They crave a return to a time when much of the inhabited world was divided into Dar al-Islam (lands inhabited and ruled by Muslims according to Sharia, Islamic law) and Dar al-Harb (literally "the House of War", meaning all the other lands).
Anything that helps polarise the world's populations further down this path of segregation and an "us and them" mentality is welcomed by the extremists.
When refugees surged out of Syria and headed west towards Europe instead of into the self-styled IS caliphate centred on Raqqa, IS's leadership was baffled and angry, viewing this as treachery.
The executive order on immigration now risks playing into their hands.
As IS finds itself ruling an ever-shrinking area of territory in the Middle East, it can be counted on to take maximum advantage of this latest development to recruit new followers and urge existing ones to carry out attacks.
Some of those may already be living inside the United States.
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George Potter, Guildford | Nick Clegg is not facing any leadership challenges at this year's Liberal Democrat conference - but will he still be in charge time next year? And how many MPs will the party have?
My guess is that it would be either Tim Farron or Danny Alexander. Personally, I would prefer Tim but I am not over the moon about either. With the best will in the world we are not going to have a fantastic election and I can't see how Nick Clegg could possibly stay in after any kind of battering, even if it's only a fairly mild one and also, to be fair, I think if he did try to stay there are enough people in the party who don't really want him as leader who are currently biting their tongues until after the election. There are plenty of people who - if he tried to stay on beyond the general election - would happily throw him out if he didn't want to leave on his own.
MPs prediction: If we got between 40 and 50 Nick Clegg might well be in a better position to stay. I don't think he could stay if we lost half of our MPs.
Joe Otten, Sheffield Hallam (Nick Clegg's constituency)
If we have a good result I think he'll stay. Anything better than current expectations.
MPs prediction: The polling on Lib Dem Voice says the median range is 30 to 46. It's possible he could stay with more than 30 [the party currently has 56 MPs].
Christine Wells, Huntingdonshire
I joined the party in 2010 specifically because of Nick Clegg. I thought he was the most fantastic thing. He showed great courage, commitment, self-sacrifice... A lot of people left the party but I was the other way round and I joined specifically for Nick Clegg on the grounds that -even back then - there were signs of mutiny and overthrow and that is why I joined the party - to have his back and be there in the event of any insurgency. If he were to go as leader then I would be gone as well. I wish there were an awful lot more like me out there.
George Cunningham, Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Thanet North
Nick Clegg will be leader. It's an unknown factor what's going to happen but I think he's a fine leader. He's done his very best and I think he should continue. But we will have to see how many seats are left and what the general mood of the party will be.
There is a certain irony [that first past-the-post-voting could save the party]. It's not a system we want at all but if the system serves the purpose of continuing to be a moderate party of the centre and helping moderate the extremities of other parties, I think first-past-the-post, we can be thankful for it, at least for the time being.
MPs prediction: It certainly won't be more seats but in terms of the losses, it can't be said for the time being, in an uncertain world.
Sheila Thomson, vice-chair Scottish Liberal Democrats
We have to wait and see what happens after the general election. I'm not making a comment.
MPs prediction: I hope in Scotland we will have as many as we have now. That we will still have 11 in Scotland.
Doris Maltin, Worthing and Adur
Nick Clegg is our leader. We want him to continue to be our leader. We think he is the right man for the job at the moment, definitely. I think he has done excellent work within the coalition. I am very happy for him to be our leader, certainly for the foreseeable future.
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No energy source is perfect. | By Richard AndersonBusiness reporter, BBC News
Fossil fuels emit damaging CO2, wind and solar are variable, nuclear generates radioactive waste, while biomass, depending on the source, can encourage deforestation.
On paper, tidal and wave power would appear to be the best solution, using the ferocious force of the oceans to deliver clean, abundant and consistent energy.
Yet despite the fact the first large-scale tidal project opened in La Rance in France in the 1960s, sea power provides just a fraction of the energy delivered by its renewable counterparts - currently just 0.5GW compared with almost 400GW of wind power.
But renewed determination to develop new technologies to harness the ocean's power means the tidal industry could be set for something of a renaissance.
World first
A tidal project similar to that in La Rance has been built in South Korea, with smaller plants in China, Canada and Australia. Together, these make up nearly all the tidal power generated across the world.
The world's first man-made tidal lagoon in Swansea Bay in Wales is currently awaiting planning permission, while the developer behind the scheme has plans for a further five projects around the UK.
All take advantage of what is called the tidal range - the change in the height of water between low and high tides. An artificial barrier is built, generally across an estuary, to hold water when the tide goes out. This water is then let back into the sea, driving turbines in the process. When the tide is high, the water is let back in, again driving the turbines.
In fact, the basic process is very similar to that used in hydropower stations across the world.
The problem, as Cedric Philibert at the International Energy Agency (IEA) explains, is that: "You can only make a tidal barrage where there is a huge difference in sea levels, and there are only a limited number of places where this happens, mainly Canada, Northern Europe and Korea."
There are also some environmental concerns, particularly with building barriers across estuaries, which are biologically very diverse and home to fish nurseries. Mr Philibert says it took 20 years for the natural environment to recover fully from the La Rance barrage.
He says artificial lagoons, such as that proposed in Swansea, are far less disruptive.
Powerful currents
But other technologies could help to unleash the true potential of tidal power.
The 1.2MW Seageneration project in Strangford Lough in Northern Ireland, installed in 2008, generates energy from tidal currents, rather than range. Two horizontal axis turbines are anchored to the seabed and are driven by the powerful currents resulting from the tide moving in and out.
As an important area for nature conservation, extensive environmental impact studies have been carried out and, according to Dee Nunn at Renewable UK, "no concerns have been realised".
The proposed MeyGen project in the Pentland Firth in Scotland aims to take tidal power to the next level, with a number of more traditional, three-bladed turbines producing almost 400MW by the early 2020s.
But this is just beginning.
Eight different technologies are currently being tested by the European Marine Energy Centre (Emec), based in Orkney off the northern coast of Scotland, one of the most fertile sites for both tidal and wave power and the only grid-connected test centre in the world.
These are being developed by a range of companies, from small dedicated tidal firms to big utilities and energy equipment manufacturers, and include all manner of different designs, from seabed and floating turbines to corkscrews and circular rings with rotors.
Swedish company Minesto is even pioneering a system where kites tethered to the seabed effectively fly on the currents.
And because they rely on tidal currents rather than differences in sea height, "these in-stream technologies could be used on a much larger scale", says Mr Philibert.
Choppy waters
But even the potential of tidal stream energy is overshadowed by that of wave power. Tidal turbines still need fast currents to generate worthwhile amounts of power, and so are well-suited to the edge of islands and, particularly, the inlets between them.
Waves are everywhere where there is good wind speed.
The problem has been developing a system that is robust enough to cope with the extreme conditions of the open waters, not least the need to cope with a hundred-year wave.
As Ms Nunn says, "This is proving more difficult [than tidal]."
Since 2011, the 300kW Mutriku wave project has been operating in Spain, but this is a rare exception.
Scottish wave power company Pelamis is a case in point. Despite being a pioneer in the industry, developing its first prototype in 2004 and having successfully generated 250MW/h of electricity, the firm went into administration late last year. Others are also struggling to attract sufficient investment.
But many firms have been able to secure funding, and are continuing to develop various technologies, with four companies currently in testing at Emec.
Australian company Carnegie Wave Energy is also making great strides using large buoys 20 metres in diameter, sitting under the surface of the water, says Ms Nunn.
High costs
All these technologies are a long way from commercialisation, and there has been some frustration at the pace of development of both tidal and wave power.
As Lisa MacKenzie at Emec says, "Everyone was expecting to progress faster and some have been a little over-optimistic."
The main barrier is cost. For example the test phase of the MeyGen project, involving four turbines generating 6MW of power, will cost £50m. When competing against more advanced clean technologies such as wind and solar, this can be hard to justify.
Any truly transformative technology takes time and money, but ocean power has plenty of potential. In the UK, for example, the Carbon Trust says tidal and wave power could meet 20% of the country's total energy needs.
With new projects likely to open in France, the UK, Canada and Korea in the coming years, the IEA forecasts global ocean power generation to double to 1GW by 2020.
High costs and the very challenging ocean environment will continue to hamper development, but the industry is confident these barriers can be overcome, with tidal and wave power eventually making a meaningful contribution to global energy supply.
Governments may have to contribute a greater share of the development costs, but this could be a small price to pay for harnessing this immense source of clean, predictable energy.
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Can you remember your 12th birthday? | By Kameron VirkNewsbeat reporter
There was probably some cake - maybe even in the shape of a caterpillar - and, if you were lucky, friends, family and a few presents.
Whatever you did that day, the chances are it's not affected the rest of your life very much.
But for Joe Franklin, who possesses a trainer collection so exclusive he's become one of the go-to suppliers for the UK rap scene, that day is when it all began.
He saved up some birthday money and put it towards a pair of Jessie J's signature Nike Air Max 90s, trainers he says he only wanted to impress his friends.
"Later that day someone offered me double what I paid. So obviously I took it and I made double my money," he tells Radio 1 Newsbeat.
Since then the most expensive pair of trainers he's sold went for £62,000, after he flew to LA and bought them from a collector for £45,000.
They were a pair of Back to the Future Nike Air Mags that laced themselves up - just like in the movie.
That's an eye-watering number but Joe - who's still only 17 and lives at home with his parents in north-west London - says the "higher net-worth" collectors he sells to see trainers like art.
Most of his clients live in Russia and Dubai - the type of people who might come to London and park their gold Lamborghinis outside Harrods over the summer.
But he also sells to a lot of UK-based rappers who want something that will make them stand out in a video shoot, or just look good.
Dizzee Rascal, AJ Tracey, Notes and M Huncho have all been clients.
The college dropout
Joe says on an average week he now makes anywhere between £5,000 and £20,000.
He was making half of that while still at school - so it's probably not surprising he ended up dropping out of college at 16 with just a couple of GCSEs.
"I had so many people getting in contact with me requesting to buy trainers and asking if I could source them trainers, and I couldn't do it while being in college. It was too much to deal with."
Joe, who's dyslexic, says he was never particularly academic anyway. But people at school saw he had an "eye for a deal".
"They could see I'm not this ultra-bright kid but that I know when there's money to be made."
He admits his parents thought him dropping out of college was "crazy" at first.
"But as as months went by and I carried on doing it, they realised it's a commodity, right?
"It's supply and demand at the end of the day. They didn't even look at it as trainers. They just saw it as a product that I could get hold of and make profit on."
He uses Instagram to show off some of his products, through @5upplied, and brings clients to a space he works out of in east London - by appointment only.
It is, Joe says, an exclusive service.
He gives the time he delivered a pair of Nike SB Dunk Paris trainers, worth £30,000, to a private jet at Luton private aviation airport - having been given just two hours to source them - as an example.
"If you need your trainers delivered to you on a runway, I can deliver them on a runway. It really doesn't matter," he says.
To make that happen he had to speed across the country - in a taxi, Joe is still learning to drive - negotiating with the collector he was sourcing the trainers from on the way.
After picking them up he got to the airport, and the buyer was "in the jet, sitting there with his wife and his kids, luggage and food everywhere. And he's like 'I can't believe you made it.
'I texted you two hours ago to get me some of the rarest trainers out and you've literally delivered them to me on a plane'."
Joe says it was a moment that really meant something to him.
"I was really humbled by what he said. Obviously you know your clients are satisfied with the service you're giving them but when they say it to you and they really mean it, it means a lot more."
Watch the Newsbeat documentary DIY Generation: Young Hustlers.
Joe says that's why he can't "fanboy" the artists who come through his doors.
"I'm here to deliver a service they can't get elsewhere. Even if Drake came in, I wouldn't act like a fanboy. It's just another potential client coming through - I'm just trying to deliver my service."
It all sounds very serious - but Joe's 17 and making a decent amount of money. Surely he's living a life some of us can only dream of? It's only natural to ask what he spends his money on.
"Honestly? I just reinvest it back into the business. I use my money to make more money."
And he reveals that his friends, who are mostly still at school or working, don't even ask him to get the rounds in at the weekend. "Not yet," he laughs.
Joe plans to expand out of trainers and launch a "social media music app - nothing that's been done before", but says he'll keep selling trainers until he finds something better to sell.
His tip to anyone wanting to start a business - which he caveats by reminding us he's still only 17 - is to "learn from your mistakes, always take criticism, just keep trying - and never give up".
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Britain is getting back on its bike. | By Becky MortonBBC News
Whether it's down to the need for exercise during lockdown, the joy of seeing empty streets, or the urge to avoid packed public transport in a pandemic, there has been a very definite boom in cycling across the UK.
This has prompted the government to promise money for new pop-up bike lanes and cycle-only corridors. But campaigners say more action is needed to make cyclists feel safe on the roads as traffic increases.
Jude Duncan didn't use to own a bike. Now she is part of a wave of new cyclists who have taken to the roads during the pandemic. "I wouldn't have even stepped foot in a gym before or done any exercise," the 57-year-old says.
But when lockdown began she wanted to find a way to get out of the house and keep fit, so she decided to take the plunge and buy a second-hand bike.
"It's the best thing I've ever bought," Jude says. She says cycling has also improved her mental health.
Even with the lower levels of traffic during lockdown, Jude was still wary of cycling on roads at first. However, where she lives in Leicester, the council has introduced a number of pop-up cycle lanes, which have given her the confidence to venture on to busier roads.
She's since started cycling the two-mile journey to her job in the city centre, where she works at a drug and alcohol treatment service, and has also been doing longer rides on her days off.
Leicester is one of at least 40 councils across the country that have made changes to roads during lockdown, such as closing streets to cars and introducing pop-up bike lanes.
Jude describes the new lanes as "a godsend". "I wouldn't go on the roads if they weren't there," she says. "If you're being encouraged to ride a bike, then you have to be able to do it safely."
Pete Gibbons, who lives in Bristol, has also been taking advantage of the quieter roads in lockdown to cycle with his nine-year-old daughter. In the past, their rides had been limited to a handful of trips along a local towpath. But in March they decided to try cycling into the city centre.
"Previously that has always been a bit of a no-no for me with my daughter because Bristol has got some cycle lanes but they're not really connected up, so you've got to encounter some pretty big junctions and roads to get to them," he says.
"It was a completely different experience during lockdown because there wasn't any traffic, so it felt safe to be on some of the main city roads."
Pete is keen to carry on cycling and cut his car use for environmental reasons. But he says safety is a key concern when he's with his daughter and he would like to see more cycle lanes to help them continue to feel confident on the roads as traffic picks up again.
So what are local councils doing?
In May, the Department for Transport pledged £225m of emergency funding to help councils introduce measures like pop-up cycle lanes and safer junctions in England.
The funding is the first stage of a £5bn package to encourage greener modes of transport, which was announced in February.
Funding for similar schemes has also been announced in Scotland and Wales, while in Northern Ireland, pop-up cycle lanes have been introduced in Belfast.
The charity Sustrans says it is aware of changes to more than 270 streets so far, including the creation of 48 new temporary cycle lanes in cities including Glasgow, Newcastle and Salford.
In London, there are also plans for car-free zones as well as a further 30km (18.6 miles) of permanent cycle lanes to be built over the summer.
It comes amid a surge in lockdown cycling, according to government figures.
But with traffic now creeping back up to around 75% of pre-lockdown levels, campaigners say more action is urgently needed to keep new cyclists on the roads.
Rachel White, head of public affairs at Sustrans, says progress has been mixed across the country, with measures introduced quickly in places like London, Greater Manchester and Brighton, where plans to boost cycling were already in place.
However, in other areas campaigners are frustrated at a lack of action.
Cross-party group Bike Worcester has described its local council's plans for cycling as "inadequate", arguing the leadership there is too reluctant to take away road space from cars.
Worcestershire County Council says it is "committed to improving walking and cycling routes across the county" and has submitted a bid for emergency government funding for measures including new marked cycle lanes using dashed white lines.
But Matthew Jenkins, a member of Bike Worcester who is also a Green Party councillor, says the proposals aren't enough to help new cyclists feel safe on the roads.
Instead he says the council should be reducing the number of lanes for cars or making roads one-way to create fully segregated bike lanes and more space for cyclists.
It comes at a time when the coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated financial problems for many councils. Meanwhile, in other areas, changes have encountered opposition from drivers.
In south Gloucestershire, a temporary cycle lane was removed from a major road in Filton after just five days, following complaints it was causing congestion.
Keir Gallagher, campaigns manager for Cycling UK, says the steps taken by many councils so far are "a very good start" but more needs to be done to avoid a return to congested roads and overcrowding on public transport as lockdown is eased.
"If measures aren't taken now, then unfortunately a lot of those people who have discovered cycling are going to be lost and people are going to return to their cars if they don't feel safe," he says.
"The key things we'd like to see are protected routes into town and city centres which are continuous, which feel like they would be safe to anyone, even if they're not a particularly confident cyclist.
"And then in the longer term, we need to be thinking about joining these up into more coherent networks."
For now, Jude is hoping the pop-up cycle lanes will become a permanent fixture in Leicester. "They're fantastic to get around the city," she says. "I just wonder why the council have never done it before."
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Grainne, Lord Sugar will see you now... | By Peter CoulterBBC Good Morning Ulster
Grainne McCoy battled for weeks to stay in the competition and made the final five.
On Wednesday evening we watched as the businesswoman, from Dromintee near Newry, took on Lord Sugar's aides as she was grilled on her business plan.
It didn't work out for the make-up artist and she didn't make it to the final. As they say in the Apprentice: "Grainne - You're Fired".
"I absolutely loved the process, the whole experience. I loved every task," she told the BBC's Good Morning Ulster programme. '
'Tipsy on gin'
"The interview was the most terrifying experience of my life."
Grainne didn't have the best luck and spent a lot more time in the losing team than the winning team each week.
"Believe it or not, the boat show was one of my favourite ones even though we failed," she said.
During the task, Lord Sugar instructed the candidates to develop a product that they would have to sell to boating enthusiasts at the Poole Harbour Boat Show.
"I worked so hard in every task and I think Lord Sugar seen that, I put 100% into every task.
"I know I made a few mistakes, including getting half tipsy on gin and getting away with it, but he must have seen something in me and took me through to the final five."
Crazy or incredible?
Northern Ireland has had an impressive showing in the TV programme with 'Jedi' Jim Eastwood doing well and Leah Totton going on to win the competition.
"They were very strong candidates and I wanted to follow in their footsteps," she said.
"The support from home is a massive help as well. We were told it was going to be crazy but it has been incredible.
"I'm just a normal young girl from the countryside, I went on there with a dream and I made it to the final five."
The audience were drawn to Grainne after hearing about how she became pregnant, ages 15, while she was at school.
"It hasn't been easy but I decided after having Ryan at 16 I wasn't going to sit down and do nothing just because I had a child," she said.
In a programme broadcast earlier this week Grainne's former Head of Year Jarlath Burns told the BBC he doubted that she would return to school after having the baby.
"I went back to school four weeks later and got my exams," said Ms Burns.
"I think the whole of my town was surprised I went back. I didn't tell anyone I was pregnant until six and a half months, two months later and I had Ryan."
She said she was determined to make sure Ryan was provided for when she finished school but found it challenging to pursue her career at the same time.
"Obviously it's really difficult being a single mother. I had a full time job, I'd arrange my lunch, pick him up from school and take him to the childminder.
Then I moved to London to try and get a bit more experience in the make up field."
Grainne says it has now all paid off, she is moving forward in business and that her son Ryan is very proud of her.
"What I'm taking away from this is that I never believed I was capable to do as much," she said.
"I never knew I could create my own gin, well I knew I could drink it obviously, but the branding and the pitching.
"I've gained a lot of confidence and a lot of business knowledge and I'd do it all over again."
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The government and the cabinet "is united". | By Iain WatsonPolitical correspondent, BBC News
Now, on the surface, these words from Michael Gove shouldn't be surprising. A minister wouldn't advertise disunity.
The surprise though is that - as one of the most prominent Leave campaigners - he was talking about an implementation period post-Brexit which could last for an unspecified amount of time.
Insiders say his arrival at the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and dealing with the powerful farming lobby may have influenced his view.
Some of the most prominent Remain ministers have been expressing relief - tinged in one case with just a hint of triumphalism - that they think in recent weeks that they have managed to sell the idea of a soft landing - or as some say "no cliff edge" - after the UK leaves the EU in 2019 to some of their more sceptical colleagues.
So much for unity. Where do differences still lie?
It was interesting that, in answering my question on whether freedom of movement would continue under an implementation period, that Michael Gove didn't rule this out. Migration, he argued, would be decided by the needs of the economy.
But for how long? The tectonic plates may have moved on a transitional deal but its duration is where cabinet fault lines persist.
Liam Fox has been pretty clear he doesn't want to contemplate anything more than two years.
As one minister put it - he has waited forty years to leave the EU so two more won't matter.
But anther prominent cabinet Brexiteer told me he thought it would be a "disaster" if the implementation period hadn't concluded by the assumed date of the next election in 2022 while others have talked about anything up to a four year period.
Then what form will any transition take?
Could there be temporary membership of the European Economic Area? Some leavers might be suspicious that temporary would become permanent.
Should we stay in the customs union a bit longer until we hammer out a bespoke deal post Brexit?
The EU is unlikely to get the clarity it seeks until there is clarity around the cabinet table.
So while some Remainer ministers I have spoken to this week were upbeat, relaxed and chipper - and believe that British business is making its influence felt - many issues remain unresolved.
And, of course, I use the term 'Remainer" historically - the cabinet is also united on leaving the EU but the question is how.
There has been talk of soft, hard and clean Brexits. Increasingly another word has entered the lexicon.
David Davis uses it. Michael Gove used it today. Expect to hear more of it. Pragmatic. That's now the goal - a pragmatic Brexit. And that necessarily means compromise at cabinet level as well as with the EU.
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It's a crime mystery. | By Danny ShawHome affairs correspondent, BBC News
Why has there been a surge in the number of Muslim prisoners?
In 2002, 5,502 prisoners in England and Wales said they were Muslim.
Three years later, the number had risen to 7,246 and almost a decade on, by December 2014, it had reached 12,225.
OK, I hear you say, the overall prison population has also increased, so what's the big deal?
Indeed, prisoner numbers have risen from an average of 70,778 in 2002 to 84,691 last December.
But that 20% increase in the jail population has been outstripped by the rise in Muslim inmates - up 122%.
One possible explanation for the rise is that there are now more Muslims in the general population.
In the 2001 census, 3% of people in England and Wales said they were Muslim - 1.55 million.
By 2011, that had gone up to 4.8 % - 2.7 million people - so you'd expect the numbers in prison to go up too.
Not terrorists
But the percentage rise in Muslim prisoner numbers has been far greater than the Muslim population increase: Muslim inmates now account for 14.4% of those behind bars, compared with 7.7 % in 2002.
The media focus on terrorism might lead some to think that the Muslim prisoner population increase is linked to convictions of Islamist extremists.
But the figures don't bear that out either.
Ministry of Justice data shows that between October 2012 and January 2015, there were 104 Muslims out of 178 prisoners who'd been jailed for "terrorism-related offences where the motivation stemmed from extreme ideology" - less than 1% of the total Muslim prisoner population.
Another factor that's cited is the increasing number of foreign national prisoners: there were about 10,500 last year - one in eight of the total prisoner population.
A Ministry of Justice analysis in 2013 suggested that a significant minority, 30%, of Muslim prisoners weren't British - last year the top 10 overseas nationalities included inmates from two predominantly Muslim countries: 522 from Pakistan, 417 from Somalia.
It does lend some support to the theory that as the UK's ethnic and population mix has changed, driven by rising levels of immigration, travel from abroad and births to foreign-born mothers, so the prison population has become more diverse, with greater numbers of Muslims.
Socio-economic factors
But there appear to be underlying reasons too.
In 2010, the then Chief Inspector of Prisons, Dame Anne Owers, published a report on Muslims in jail, in which she linked the growth in numbers to the age and socio-economic profiles of the Muslim population in general.
"Both are powerful predictors of involvement in the criminal justice system," she wrote, "and Muslims in Britain have a notably younger age profile than non-Muslims and are more likely to come from lower socio-economic groups."
Last year, 58% of Muslim prisoners were aged 30 or under, compared with 45% of the overall population, and in what's termed the "secure youth estate" - institutions which hold 10- to 17-year-olds - almost one in five prisoners was Muslim.
Amal Imad, a researcher for the charity Muslim Aid, agrees with Dame Anne's findings from five years ago that poverty - in particular not having enough money to feed a family - is a key factor driving crime, and therefore imprisonment, among Muslims.
"The underlying issue is economic crisis," she says.
'Negative stereotyping'
In a major report last year, Lady Lola Young of Hornsey reached similar conclusions about the reasons for the disproportionate representation of Muslim men at all stages of the criminal justice system.
"They are more likely to be stopped and searched, more likely to plead not guilty and more likely to be tried.
"These disparities... are often part of a complex mix of educational, employment, health and social inequalities that have characterised many of their lives," says Lady Young.
But her study - funded by the Barrow Cadbury Trust, an independent charitable group - also points to evidence of something more disturbing: discrimination. It says policy-makers and politicians haven't "fully grasped" the impact of "negative stereotyping" and "cultural difference".
Lady Young says: "Most of the prisoners we met with all said that they experienced differential treatment as a result of their race, ethnicity or faith.
"Black prisoners felt that they were stereotyped as drug dealers and Muslim prisoners as terrorists."
Could it be that negative stereotypes and institutional discrimination, or "Islamaphobia", as it's referred to, is fuelling the increase in Muslim prisoner numbers?
Amal Imad, from Muslim Aid, doesn't think so. She says it's the media that tends to stereotype Muslims - not criminal justice agencies.
"I don't believe the justice system is unfair.
"If they're being convicted there must be a reason for that," she says.
One of Britain's few Muslim MPs, Sadiq Khan, is determined to get to the bottom of it - asking more parliamentary questions about Muslim prisoners than any other member.
'Breathtaking' complacency
The shadow justice secretary promises that if Labour are elected, they'll put in place a "national strategy" to address the issue, claiming the government has been "utterly clueless" about the growing Muslim population .
"Their complacency is breathtaking," he says.
In response, the Ministry of Justice says the government is committed to ensuring the criminal justice system is "fair, inclusive and impartial, and represents and serves the whole community".
In a statement, the department says: "Each prison has a multi-faith chaplaincy team to meet the religious and pastoral needs of all faiths, including Muslims, and we expect every prisoner to engage in purposeful work and rehabilitation to give them the opportunity to turn away from crime for good."
Few would disagree with that - in fact, the reoffending rates of Muslim prisoners are already substantially lower than others, at about 36% compared with 45% .
But it seems we've only just started understanding the reasons why so many are locked up in the first place.
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"We are the builders". | Laura KuenssbergPolitical editor@bbclaurakon Twitter
It feels a very long time since George Osborne made that claim for the Conservative Party and the record of the government since then has not really borne that out.
But right now, in some parts of the Tories there is a definite sense that unless they come up with an effective offer - politicians' term, not mine - on housing, they are on course to lose the next election.
There is tangible pressure then, not just on the Communities Secretary, Sajid Javid, but more to the point, the chancellor.
Next week the political expectation is that Philip Hammond's Budget will provide at least part of the answer to that political quandary.
Later today, there will be a tentative step in that direction, with Prime Minister Theresa May and Mr Javid donning hard hats to try to show they care, and announcing that housing associations' financial status will change.
But beyond what is announced this week there is, insiders suggest, a wider three-way fight going on over the best way to proceed.
The Department for Communities and Local Government, which Mr Javid heads, is said to be pushing not just for more money to build new houses, but also for more loosening up of the planning rules and more power to get building going on publicly-owned land.
The chancellor, sources suggest, is more focused on marginal changes to the market, as a traditional Conservative, to make the conditions more conducive for business to get building, rather than any bold intervention.
But inside No 10, it is not just the prime minister who is all too aware of the political pressure on housing, but her chief of staff Gavin Barwell- a former housing minister - who I'm told is "beating up on Hammond" to go further than he is willing so far to move.
Right now in the immediate run-up to the announcement no minister or government official would acknowledge on the record exactly what's going on.
But these pre-Budget announcements, while important, are far from the end of the story.
There is a live argument, that relates to the kind of government Theresa May really wants to run - intervene in markets significantly with all the opportunity and the risk that presents, or tweak round the edges and hope to influence the wider economy's instincts.
In housing, as in much of her decision making, it just isn't clear which direction Theresa May really wants to go.
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It seems almost perverse. | By Leo KelionTechnology desk editor
At a time when the spread of surveillance tech is stoking controversy, I decided to install an app-controlled internet camera in my flat.
The gadget allowed me to look and listen in to my fiancee and pet cat's living-room activities at any time, and would send me an alert if it detected movement or noise I might be interested in.
A night-vision mode meant the dark offered no respite, and just in case I missed anything there was also the opportunity to review and download a time-lapse clip of recent events.
Paula, my partner, was rather uneasy about the development.
"It's the devil's work," she declared on being introduced to the kit.
"I don't like this, I feel like I'm on Big Brother. I can't pick my nose any more."
Explaining the experiment to others also raised issues.
My brother asked if we were indulging in some twisted Pornhub fantasy, and even my tech-savvy work colleagues struggled to see the appeal.
But I was curious: would getting increased access to Paula and Miggy's private lives over a two-week period make us closer, or just prove a creep-out?
Wedding dress
Things did not get off to an auspicious start.
The unit I was testing - the Withings Home - is deliberately designed to blend in, meaning it is easy to forget it is there.
This almost caused a prenuptial catastrophe.
On the first morning of our experiment, I was woken by a notification that prompted me to watch a brief video of an activity the camera had just captured.
It showed Paula unpacking her wedding dress for a quick twirl while she thought I was still dozing.
Luck alone meant the clip cut out before the bridal gown swung into full view.
After revealing this, my Brazilian partner became hugely self-conscious of the lounge-based "intruder". Over the course of the rest of the weekend, she made and received calls to her family in other rooms of the flat even though I do not speak Portuguese, so would not benefit from listening in.
What surprised me was how briefly this transition period lasted before her behaviour returned to normal.
A few ground rules probably helped.
Top of the list: no lurking in a remote location without revealing that I was connected.
This was relatively easy to achieve because I could talk through the camera's on-board speaker via an associated tablet and smartphone app to flag my presence.
Pangs of conscience
It also helped that it soon became clear the main attraction, for both Paula and me, was watching our housebound pet - both via a high-definition live stream and a compressed recap of his activities at the end of the day.
Logging in for feline feeds, it turns out, is not only addictive but feels substantially less shameful than doing the same to a human.
But that is not to say it was a guilt-free experience.
In my imagination, during our long hours away from home, Miggy would stroll round the flat, play with his toys, scratch his post and generally engage in an elaborate domestic exercise programme.
What we discovered was that after staring at the window for a few minutes to see if we would return, he would slump on to the sofa and remain there for 15 hours or more.
Helpful neighbours
As a result I now make more of a fuss of him when we are in.
But the discovery that he lets out three short, sharp, cute mews when he hears us at the front door hardly makes up for the fact I am now struck by pangs of conscience every time I go out.
There were benefits to the system.
Discovering that Paula had held up an "I love you" sign to the camera while I was at the gym was particularly heart-warming.
The camera also proved useful when we went away for a long weekend and could see that our neighbours had repeatedly popped in to keep Miggy company, although in retrospect we should have warned them of the gadget's existence in advance.
But there was more than a modicum of relief when I unplugged the camera and put it away for the last time.
Face the wall
The Home, and competing devices including Google's Dropcam, Netatmo's Welcome and Xiaomi's Yi Smart, are marketed as ways to help parents keep an eye on their children, and families as a whole capture memories that would otherwise be lost.
The companies also suggest that owning such kit acts as a deterrent to thieves whose images would be stored online, even if they took the cameras as part of their haul.
When I quizzed Withings' brand manager Lucie Broto about her product, she suggested that even pets could benefit. She suggested speaking to my cat while I was out to entertain him.
I suspect my disembodied voice would be more likely to freak him out.
More telling was her revelation, when pressed, that her boyfriend often turns their copy of the Home to face the wall or even unplugs it when he is at home alone in their Paris apartment.
'Jealous boyfriends'
After a fortnight of being put under the internet's equivalent of the microscope, the last word deservedly goes to Paula: "These things need to have a purpose. For security you could set up an alarm at the door.
"It seems to me they're more about having control over other people in the house.
"One of the ads they use shows a little kid holding up a drawing to the camera, but in reality it will be about the parents checking when their children came home and if they did their homework. Or jealous boyfriends checking what their other half is doing.
"It's an intrusion of privacy, I felt like someone had bugged our home."
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"Like Glentoran signing Lionel Messi." | By John CampbellBBC News NI Economics & Business Editor
The world of Northern Ireland public finance rarely inspires hyperbole like that.
But it is how the economist Richard Ramsey described the appointment of the chairman of Stormont's new independent budget oversight body.
The fiscal Messi is Sir Robert Chote, the former chairman of the UK's Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR).
Sir Robert became the OBR's first permanent chair in 2010, building it into a trusted independent body and showing himself to be a highly effective communicator.
Its jobs include evaluating the government's performance against its own tax and spending targets and assessing the long-term sustainability of the public finances.
In a recent piece for the Financial Times Sir Robert explained his work there was guided by two principles: making the public finances more transparent and highlighting the uncertainty that always surrounds the outlook.
Independence from government
He will lead the creation of a similar institution for Stormont, to be called the Fiscal Council.
A budget oversight body of this sort has been promised since the Fresh Start political deal of 2015.
It will be one of many such bodies which have proliferated in the aftermath of the last financial crash.
The assembly's research service has provided a useful overview of these "Independent Fiscal Institutions", noting that their key characteristic is independence from the executive arm of government.
This will be particularly important for increasing transparency in Northern Ireland as the system of power-sharing government lacks an official opposition.
How Stormont ministers ultimately react to a new source of authority and challenge will be interesting.
As Sir Robert noted in his FT article, independent fiscal institutions form part of a broader institutional architecture underpinning good government and economic management, but which can sometimes be "inconvenient or frustrating" to governments.
Taxation focus
He is not the only "fiscal galactico" on his way to Stormont.
The Finance Minster Conor Murphy also unveiled Paul Johnson as the chairman of a second body, the Fiscal Commission, which will look at what further taxation powers could be devolved to Stormont.
Mr Johnson is director of the Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS), a think tank which has carved out a distinctive niche explaining what UK budgets really mean.
For example, Mr Johnson said that in this month's budget the chancellor of wasn't really "levelling with people" about the £4bn of spending cuts he was proposing.
He will spend around nine months leading a study on options for the devolution of taxes from Westminster, as well as other revenue raising measures.
In 2015, Stormont won the power to cut Corporation Tax, albeit still requiring further Westminster approval that the Executive's finances are on a sound enough footing to take such a step.
But there has no comprehensive review of devolved taxation powers, unlike in Scotland and Wales.
It has long been Sinn Féin policy that more taxation powers should come to Stormont, but their DUP partners take a more sceptical view.
That scepticism was reflected in a recent editorial in the unionist daily, The News Letter, which concluded that "major revenue raising powers would make Northern Ireland even more a place apart from Great Britain, which suits republicans".
Whatever unionist reservations, with Mr Johnson on board they will at least know they are getting a robust and independent piece of work assessing the options.
An observation by one of Mr Johnson's IFS colleagues at the start of the pandemic may give us a clue to some of the territory the Fiscal Commission could cover beyond tax.
In March 2020, David Phillips suggested that at least on a temporary basis the devolved administrations should be given more borrowing powers and noted that the crisis could "be a prompt to consider the suitability of elements of the fiscal system - like the Barnett formula - that have long been subject to calls for reform".
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Britain opposes the death penalty. | James LandaleDiplomatic correspondent@BBCJLandaleon Twitter
In its annual update on human rights and democracy around the world published last week, the Foreign Office said: "It is the long-standing policy of the UK to oppose the death penalty in all circumstances as a matter of principle."
It added: "The FCO continues to raise concerns over the use of the death penalty in the US."
Only according to the Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, it does not.
His letter to the US Attorney General, leaked to the Daily Telegraph, makes clear that the UK is not seeking any assurances from the Americans that two captured jihadi fighters of British origin will not face the death penalty if they are tried in the US.
This has now been confirmed on the floor of the House of Commons.
Not surprisingly this has provoked a strong backlash.
Labour and the Lib Dems have issued statements accusing the home secretary of undermining human rights. Amnesty International accused him of hypocrisy.
And even Downing Street has been cautious, saying the prime minister had been aware of the decision but the spokesman refused to go so far as to say that she actually approved of it.
So why might Mr Javid take this decision, in apparent breach of long-standing British policy?
He says in his letter he has "strong reasons" for not seeking any assurances. He does not say what these reasons are.
But he suggests that this case is "distinct" because the two fighters of British origin - part of the so-called "Beatles group" - are accused of kidnapping and murdering UK and US citizens, how they are treated will be an example to others, and there is a need to deliver justice to their victims' relatives.
But none of this explains why Mr Javid might want to risk the political backlash that will follow any decision to weaken Britain's opposition to the death penalty.
Perhaps the real motivation is the government's desperation to avoid having to try these two men in Britain.
They are currently being held in northern Syria by the Syrian Democratic Forces. They have been stripped of their UK nationality.
Cases like these are extremely difficult to prosecute because of the difficulty in obtaining evidence, finding witnesses and establishing what crimes have been committed in which jurisdiction.
And in his letter, Mr Javid argues that a more successful prosecution is more likely in the US where laws are different to the UK.
What ministers and MPs believe is that Mr Javid is attempting to smooth the way for the Americans to take the cases by letting them know that the UK will not, for once, kick up a fuss about the death penalty.
In other words, this is all part of a deal. And some sources suggest this is a deal with precedent, that this is not the first time the UK has turned a blind eye towards its death penalty policy.
The Security Minister, Ben Wallace, told MPs that it had happened before but not while he has been in his job.
He explained that little-known guidance to ministers, known as the Overseas Security and Justice Assistance guidance, that was last updated January 2017, allowed the Home Secretary to make an exception to the rule.
It states "written assurances should be sought before agreeing to the provision of assistance that anyone found guilty would not face the death penalty" but "where no assurances are forthcoming or where there are strong reasons not to seek assurances, the case should automatically be deemed 'High Risk' and FCO Ministers should be consulted to determine whether, given the specific circumstances of the case, we should nevertheless provide assistance".
This has not assuaged the concerns that have come from many quarters. MPs from all sides of the House have expressed their worries.
The truth is that it appears a corner is being cut in a hard case.
The desire to ensure that some allegedly evil individuals are prosecuted in the United States for some particularly brutal crimes is outweighing the need to preserve the purity of Britain's opposition to the death penalty.
There will be some who do not mind this, who believe that this is a risk worth taking with individuals of this nature.
But there are others, including within government, who are wondering if this is just the wrong thing to do and there will be consequences down the line.
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1. Weird jumping | In what other circumstances do people jump like on A-level results day? Not just any jumping, but a curious salmon leap, holding a bit of paper? If you told someone something and they reacted by suddenly leaping upwards you'd probably be concerned for their well-being. It seems a reaction unique to good news about exams, fortuitously captured by the photographers on hand to record the moment.
2. Blonde ambition
Future generations, looking at traditional A-level results day pictures, could be forgiven for thinking that the only people ever to receive excellent exam results were blonde girls. Their academic prowess is illustrated by cheerleader-style line-ups, brandishing what look suspiciously like blank pieces of A4 paper. And a surprising number of these pictures seem to be in schools that have their own ornamental gardens.
3. Triplets with more As than a Finnish dictionary
There is some irresistible and largely inexplicable fascination with triplets and quadruplets getting their exam results. Children from exactly the same background getting the same A-level grades? How extraordinary. Better call a photographer and get them to jump in the air.
4. Screaming into a mobile phone
It's become a modern visual shorthand for Something Really Important to Tell You. Whether it's getting through to the next round on X Factor or in this case getting exam results, there is always an obligatory scene showing someone hyperventilating into the phone. It's emotional. It's a family moment. But that shrieking is shattering windows a mile away.
5. Opening the envelope
This Oscars-style reveal must be one of the rare occasions when teenagers experience this old-tech process called "opening an envelope". It's a long way from instant messaging and mobile phone apps. But this is one of the key scenes in the A-level results day. All those years of work, all those ambitions, it's a poignant moment looking to see what's inside.
6. Against all the odds
A hardy perennial of results day is the heart-warming story of an A-level student who has triumphed against adversity. They have achieved remarkable things against overwhelming odds. No results day is complete without an inspiring tale of stoically overcoming hardship. Unless of course their story gets bumped by a picture of a junior soap star picking up their A-levels. And jumping.
7. Precocious, moi?
Only 11 years old and they're celebrating a dozen A* grades? They might be dressed like a middle-aged professor, but these rocket-fuelled youngsters are hitting the top grades when the rest of their year group are still spending the holidays playing Minecraft. These prodigies, who might leave us feeling uneasy as well as impressed, are a compulsory fixture of the A-level results coverage.
8. Exams were harder in my day
Of course there are many parents who would see nothing controversial in such a suggestion - and every year someone starts an argument by saying something similar. The phrase "grade inflation" used to hang over the annual results day like decorations at Christmas.
But it's no longer such an easy charge, as results which rose every year for several decades have stopped rising and even headed into a gentle decline. But it remains the case that in the 1980s fewer than one in 10 students would have expected to get an A grade, while for today's students more than one in four will get an A* or A grade.
9. 'Not everyone has to go to university'
A-level results have become inseparably linked to finding out whether young people get the grades needed for university. It's almost as if they are seen as a two-year entrance exam. But this really irritates people who want young people to consider vocational study - and every year there will be someone pointing out that Sir Richard Branson didn't go to university and it didn't do him any harm.
It's also overlooked that there are many people who go into higher education without any A-levels at all, but who get their places with vocational qualifications.
10. 'It's not the end of the world'
Whatever advice a parent gives to a teenager is always going to be wrong - they're going to be irritated whatever you say. And every results day sees an abundance of experts reminding young people that there are lots of options, even if the grades are going to make Plan A difficult. But at all costs, even if you're thinking it, never ever utter the words: "It's not the end of the world."
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BBC business editor Robert Peston on BP
| How important will be BP's report into the causes of the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster, which is due to be published in the coming week or so?
Well it certainly won't be the last word on the subject: BP faces official investigations and court cases galore on how 11 rig workers lost their lives in April and why so much oil leaked into the Gulf of Mexico.
And some will refuse to believe any analysis by BP, on the basis that it can't help but be tendentious.
But even if you see the report as the case for the defence, it still matters - partly because it is the first detailed evaluation of what went wrong.
And (call me naive) but I don't see how it can be an utter whitewash. It is imperative for BP's owners - its shareholders - to understand the risks their company runs when drilling in deep waters: any attempt to disguise those risks would not be tolerated by them (surely); it would be seen as grotesque negligence on the part of BP's executives.
So I would expect a long, detailed, technical evaluation - which, even if it's not the final word on BP's culpability, will have implications for how oil companies endeavour to extract hydrocarbons from fields deep below the ocean.
In that sense, it should matter to more than just investors in BP. It should influence estimates of how much more tappable oil exists in the world - and what kind of price (direct financial, environmental) will have to be paid to tap it.
The investigation for BP was carried out by Mark Bly, BP's Group Vice President for Safety and Operations, and a team of more than 70 engineers, technical specialists and business people, some from outside the company.
For what it's worth, he has assured colleagues that he has felt no pressure from senior BP executives to cover anything up or deliver a particular verdict. And he feels he has had the resources to do the job (or so I'm told).
That said, he hasn't had all the relevant data he requested from the important contractors, viz Transocean, which owned and operated the Deepwater rig on behalf of BP, and Halliburton, which cemented the well. So he has been forced to make some assumptions in reaching his conclusions.
What has he found?
Well we know he has not concluded that BP produced a shoddy design for the well or forced its contractors to cut corners in a significant way.
How so?
Well BP's chairman, Carl-Henric Svanberg, said in July - when BP was announcing its second quarter results - that he was confident BP won't be found guilty of gross negligence.
Now it's impossible to know whether he'll be proved right as and when BP's culpability under the Clean Water Act is finally determined. But he couldn't possibly have made the claim if his own colleague, Mark Bly, had uncovered proof of grotesque dereliction of duty.
That said, any report which doesn't raise questions about safety practices would not be believable.
So as the named party on the relevant oil lease - for Mississippi Canyon Block 252 - BP (which owns 65% of property) will be embarrassed (at the very least) by its own investigation.
Even if there turned out to be important errors by employees of Transocean as operator of the platform, that would not absolve BP of blame: regulators and BP's owners (and presumably the rest of us) would expect BP to assess, monitor and correct the quality of its contractors' performance.
In a perverse way, the best that BP can hope for is that Bly has found systemic safety failures. Because it is unlikely those systemic problems would apply only to BP's management of this one new well.
If questions are raised about the quality of safety kit, or the robustness of procedures for monitoring performance or about the skills of employees, these would probably be questions for the oil industry in general when drilling in deeper water, not just for BP.
One lesson from the debacle is that the catastrophic potential of drilling in deep water is (arguably) only marginally less than what can happen when a plane falls out of the sky or a nuclear power plant goes badly wrong.
Are the safety practices in oil on a par with standard practice in nuclear generation or the airline industry? I would be very surprised if that reassuring conclusion will be drawn from Mr Bly's report.
You can keep up with the latest from business editor Robert Peston by visiting his blog on the BBC News website.
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Change yourselves or we will change you. | Nick RobinsonPolitical editor
Theresa May's message to the police was as uncompromising as the black trousers and flat black lace ups she wore to deliver it.
No minister has spoken to the Police Federation like this. No-one has dared.
Today was the day when a representative of the trade union of home secretaries took on what is, in effect, the bobbies' trade union. It's something ministers - whether Tory or Labour - have dreamt of doing for years as each took their turn to face humiliation at the Fed's Conference.
Some were heckled, some slow handclapped, others heard in orchestrated silence.
All were told they were betraying police officers who had died or been injured in the line of duty. Two years ago Theresa May was forced to stand in front of a conference slogan which dubbed her policies "criminal".
Today was payback time. Why, though, did she do what her predecessors did not?
First, because the shocking list of police misconduct which she read out today - from Hillsborough to Lawrence to Tomlinson - has changed the public mood. Second, because deep cuts to police budgets and numbers have not led to the surge in lawlessness they predicted. Crime has, in fact, fallen.
Thirdly, because Plebgate revealed to the public gaze the misconduct politicians had suspected for years.
There is, though, one other reason.
Theresa May is an ambitious politician who knows people are eyeing her as a possible future leader of her party. She knew today that standing up to the police might prove as good for her career as standing up for them proved to be for politicians in the past.
Below are the key messages and extracts of the home secretary's speech:
We cut police numbers and crime too
I know many of you were sceptical. I know you meant it when you said that spending cuts would destroy the police as we know it, that the front line service would be ruined and that crime would go shooting up.…But today we can say with confidence that spending cuts have not ended policing as we know it, the front line service has largely been maintained, and most important of all - according to both recorded crime statistics and the independent crime survey - crime is down by more than 10% since the election.
Crisis of confidence
In the last few years, we have seen the Leveson Inquiry. The appalling conclusions of the Hillsborough independent panel. The death of Ian Tomlinson and the sacking of PC Harwood. The ongoing inquiry by an independent panel into the murder of Daniel Morgan. The first sacking of a chief constable for gross misconduct in modern times. The investigation of more than ten senior officers for acts of alleged misconduct and corruption. Allegations of rigged recorded crime statistics. The sacking of PCs Keith Wallis, James Glanville and Gillian Weatherley after "Plebgate". Worrying reports by the inspectorate about stop and search and domestic violence. The Herne Review into the conduct of the Metropolitan Police Special Demonstration Squad. The Ellison Review into allegations of corruption during the investigation of the murder of Stephen Lawrence. Further allegations that the police sought to smear Stephen‟s family. Soon, there will be another judge-led public inquiry into policing.
Not just a few bad apples
When you remember the list of recent revelations about police misconduct, it is not enough to mouth platitudes about "a few bad apples". The problem might lie with a minority of officers, but it is still a significant problem, and a problem that needs to be addressed.… It cannot be right when officers under investigation by the IPCC comply with the rules by turning up for interview but then refuse to cooperate and decline to answer questions.
Such behaviour - which I am told is often encouraged by the Federation - reveals an attitude that is far removed from the principles of public service felt by the majority of police officers. It is the same attitude exposed by HMIC when officers, called to help a woman who had suffered domestic violence, accidentally recorded themselves calling the victim a "slag" and a "bitch". It is the same attitude expressed when young black men ask the police why they are being stopped and searched and are told it is "just routine" even though according to the law, officers need "reasonable grounds for suspicion". It is an attitude that betrays contempt for the public these officers are supposed to serve - and every police officer in the land, every single police leader, and everybody in the Police Federation should confront it and expunge it from the ranks.
Change yourselves or we will change you
The Police Federation is an organisation created by statute, it serves a public function and the Normington Review demonstrated very clearly that it is an organisation in need of greater transparency and accountability. So it is a change that I believe needs to be made.Change yourselves or we will change you. Theresa May's message to the police was as uncompromising as the black trousers and flat black lace ups she wore to deliver it.
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A chronology of key events:
| Ice Age - North America's first humans migrate from Asia.
11th Century - Norse explorers reach North America, establishing the first known European settlement in the Americas on Newfoundland island.
1497 - Italian-born navigator John Cabot reaches the coasts of Newfoundland and Cape Breton.
1534 - Jacques Cartier explores the St Lawrence river, and claims the shores of the Gulf of St Lawrence for France.
1583 - Newfoundland becomes England's first overseas colony.
1600s - Fur trade rivalry between the French, English and Dutch; the Europeans exploit existing rivalries between local peoples to form alliances.
1627 - Company of New France established to govern and exploit "New France" - France's North American colonies.
1670 - Hudson's Bay Company established by London traders. The company holds trading rights for regions whose rivers drain into Hudson Bay.
1701 - Thirty-eight indigenous groups sign a peace treaty near Montreal with the French.
British gains
1756 - Seven Years' War begins between New France and the larger and economically-stronger British colonies. After early French successes, the settlement of Quebec falls in 1759 and the British advance on Montreal.
1763 - Under the Treaty of Paris, Britain acquires all French colonies east of the Mississippi including New France, which becomes the colony of Quebec.
1774 - The Quebec Act recognises the French language and the Roman Catholic religion in the colony.
1776 onwards - Loyalist refugees from the American War of Independence settle in Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Quebec and Ontario.
1783 - Fur traders in Montreal set up the North West Company. The company builds up a network of trading posts across the west and north; its expeditions reach the Pacific coast.
1800s - Immigration picks up. Thousands of newcomers from England, Scotland and Ireland arrive each year.
1812-14 - War of 1812 between the US and Britain, largely over the effects on the US of British blockades of French ports. Action includes naval battles in the Great Lakes and a US attack on York (present-day Toronto). But the US fails to realise its plans to invade Canada.
1837/8 - Armed rebellions in Upper and Lower Canada, caused by disaffection with the ruling elites, poverty and social divisions.
Union of Canada
1867 - British North America Act unites Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick in the Dominion of Canada.
1870 - Manitoba becomes fifth province, followed by British Columbia and Prince Edward Island.
1885 - Canadian Pacific railroad is completed.
1898 - Gold rush along the upper Yukon River; Yukon Territory given separate status.
1905 - Alberta and Saskatchewan become provinces of Canada.
1914 - Outbreak of World War I. Canada fights on the side of Britain and France.
Autonomy from Britain
1931 - Statute of Westminster grants British dominions complete autonomy.
1939 - Outbreak of World War II: Canadian forces are active in Europe, the Atlantic and other theatres.
1947 - Canada is declared to be of equal status with Great Britain within the Commonwealth.
1949 - Canada becomes a founder member of Nato. Newfoundland, until then a British dominion, becomes a province of Canada.
1950 - War in Korea. Canadian forces participate in the United Nations war effort.
1965 - The present Canadian flag is adopted, replacing one which had incorporated the British flag.
1967 - Expo 67 in Montreal provides impetus to Canadian national identity. French President Charles de Gaulle visits and declares 'Vive le Quebec libre' (Long live free Quebec).
Trudeau era
1968 - Pierre Trudeau of the Liberal party wins elections and governs until 1984, with the exception of a nine months in 1979-80. Parti Quebecois (PQ) is formed to push for complete independence for Quebec.
1970 - Members of a radical Quebec separatist group, the Front de Liberation du Quebec, kidnap a British trade official and murder a Quebec minister.
1976 - PQ wins elections in Quebec.
1980 - A referendum on the separation of Quebec is defeated.
1982 - The UK transfers final legal powers over Canada. The country adopts its new constitution, which includes a charter of rights.
1984 - Trudeau retires. Elections are won by the Progressive Conservatives under Brian Mulroney. Mulroney realigns foreign policy towards Europe and the US.
1991 - Canadian forces participate in the Gulf War following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.
1992 - Canada, US and Mexico finalise the terms of the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta).
Conservatives' election disaster
1993 June - Kim Campbell succeeds Brian Mulroney, becoming Canada's first female prime minister. She leads the Progressive Conservatives to disaster at the October election, leaving it with only two seats out of its previous tally of 169. Jean Chretien of the Liberals becomes prime minister.
1995 - A referendum in Quebec rejects independence by a margin of only 1%.
1999 - Territory of Nunavut (meaning "our land" in the Inuit language) is created in northern Canada. The vast self-governing region in the Arctic is the first Canadian territory to have a majority indigenous population.
2002 January - Canada sends first contingent of regular troops to Afghanistan as part of the post-Taliban stabilising mission.
2003 March - Canada opts not to join the US-led coalition against Iraq. The move sparks fierce domestic political debate, and Prime Minister Chretien comes under fire from Washington.
2003 April - Liberal Party beats the Parti Quebecois in provincial elections in Quebec, ending nine years of rule by the pro-independence party.
2003 December - Former finance minister Paul Martin is sworn in as prime minister as Jean Chretien retires after 10 years in office.
Conservatives return
2005 November - A commission set up to investigate a 2004 scandal involving misspent government money exonerates Paul Martin, but criticises his predecessor Jean Chretien.
2006 January - Stephen Harper's Conservatives defeat Paul Martin in general elections, ending 12 years of Liberal government.
2006 June - In a major anti-terror operation, 17 people are arrested in Toronto on suspicion of planning attacks. An official says the men were inspired by al-Qaeda.
2006 November - Parliament agrees that the Quebecois should be considered a "nation" within Canada. The proposal was put forward by Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
2010 January - Canada hosts Winter Olympics.
Suspected ringleader of Islamic extremist group is jailed for life for plot to bomb Toronto stock exchange.
2010 June - Rwandan jailed under Canada's new war crimes act allowing courts to consider war crimes committed abroad.
Truth and reconciliation commission begins hearings into policy which forced indigenous people to abandon their cultural identity.
2011 April - Toronto policeman's remark that women can avoid rape by avoiding dressing like ''sluts'', prompts a global phenomenon: a slutwalk protest.
2011 December - Canada becomes the first country to formally withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol on reducing emissions of greenhouse gasses.
2012 September - One person is killed in a shooting at a victory rally in Montreal for the separatist Parti Quebecois, which is projected to win provincial polls in Quebec.
2014 August - Canada launches a mission to map the Arctic seabed, in support of its its bid to extend its territory up to the North Pole.
2014 October - Canada joins the US-led coalition carrying out air strikes against Islamic State militants in Iraq.
Two Islamist-inspired terrorist attacks - one in Quebec and one at Parliament Hill in Ottawa - leave two Canadian soldiers dead.
2015 February - Supreme Court rules that doctors can provide medical help in euthanasia cases, reversing a ban imposed in 1993.
Liberal majority
2015 October - Liberals under Justin Trudeau, the son for former prime minister Pierre Trudeau, return to power with a large win over the Conservatives.
2016 October - Canada signs a free trade agreement with the European Union.
2017 January - French-Canadian student Alexandre Bissonnette is charged over the shooting of six Muslims at a mosque in Quebec.
2017 October - The government says it will pay compensation to thousands of indigenous people who were taken from their families as children to be brought up by primarily white middle-class families decades ago.
2018 October - The US, Canada and Mexico reach a new trade deal to replace the current North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta). The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) gives the US greater access to Canada's dairy market, and allows extra imports of Canadian cars.
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Out of the single market. | Kamal AhmedFormer economics editor@bbckamalon Twitter
Out of the customs union.
Free of European Union laws.
Immigration under Westminster control.
If anyone was wondering whether the government might offer some substantial wriggle room on the Brexit negotiations to take account of the very different Parliamentary arithmetic following the general election, they have another think coming.
Dr Liam Fox, the cabinet minister for international trade, has told the BBC that nobody voted to "part-leave" the European Union.
The public either voted leave - which he takes to mean being out of the two substantive EU trading structures, the single market and the customs union - or remain, a vote to stay wholly in the union.
As leave won, Dr Fox argues, it is now time for the Conservatives to get on with it and deliver, even without a majority in Parliament.
"We have to go full steam ahead and get the job done," he told me, saying he didn't recognise the terms "hard" (fully out) and "soft" (partially out, or a delayed out) Brexit.
To coin a phrase, Brexit means Brexit.
And anyone, including Conservative MPs, sympathetic to a different approach - and who may feel emboldened by the election result - should remember the referendum outcome last year.
Dr Fox was speaking to me as part of a news special on BBC1 tonight at 8.30pm called Brexit: What's Next?
With colleague and Europe Editor, Katya Adler, it is an attempt to try to unpack what the remarkably close general election result means for Britain and the EU's approach to Brexit.
Dr Fox admits that getting the final Brexit deal through Parliament "won't be easier" after the Prime Minister lost her majority, but argues that Theresa May will stick to the position laid out before 8 June.
Which is fully out of the single market and the customs union.
There may be transitional arrangements as Britain moves to a new trading relationship with the EU, but Dr Fox refused to be drawn on how long that would be.
"How long is a piece of string?" he answered, after I put to him the former business secretary Sir Vince Cable's suggestion that it could be a decade before any final deal is completed.
I don't think that means Dr Fox is relaxed about how long any "transition" may take - he wants the deal done as quickly as possible.
But he does believe a "cliff edge" departure should be avoided - which may take some time, although how long, for Dr Fox, is still unclear.
"The British public made a decision to leave," Dr Fox told me.
"We have to honour that decision to leave.
"We didn't say we would part-leave the European Union.
"[The public] gave us an instruction to do so and anybody who is a democrat needs to follow that instruction.
"If we want to get what the British public voted for in the referendum - control of our laws, control of our borders, control of our money - then we have to have an exit which takes us outside the single market and outside the customs union - although we will want to maximise our ability to trade inside that market."
No 'white flag'
He said that the option of "no deal" had to be left on the table.
"What are these people actually saying to us?" Dr Fox said of those who say that "no deal" should be off the table.
"Are they saying that we should seriously go into a negotiation and saying whatever deal is offered we would accept that rather than walk away?
"I mean what sort of a negotiation actually would that be?
"It's effectively waving the white flag before the negotiations actually begin.
"It is not a sensible position for us to have
"But we don't want to get to no deal.
"We've set out the sort of deal that we want, a deal that's good for European citizens in the United Kingdom and British citizens in the European Union; that's good for British business, that enables us to trade maximally with the single market; that means there's as little friction at our borders as possible, giving Britain simultaneously the freedom to develop new trading agreements elsewhere."
Of course staying in the customs union - which would prevent Britain signing its own trade deals with countries outside the EU - would effectively make Dr Fox's department superfluous.
'Jobs and prosperity'
Dr Fox may not like the distinction between "hard" and "soft", but Philip Hammond, the Chancellor, is judged to have a rather different approach ("soft", if you like) to the type of deal Britain may strike with the EU, as I wrote last month.
And, for this BBC1 news special, both Sir Vince, who is standing to be leader of the Liberal Democrats, and Sir Keir Starmer, Labour's shadow secretary for exiting the EU, said they might be willing to join forces with Mr Hammond to put "jobs and prosperity" at the heart of the negotiations.
Dr Fox says that is a false division - and that the future prosperity of the UK is at the heart of his approach to Brexit.
Britain can be strong economically outside the EU, he says, despite the myriad of warnings that leaving the single market and the customs union could damage the UK economy.
"If you are looking at a free trade agreement in a global context, this one with the European Union ought to be the simplest in the history of mankind because we're beginning from a completely tariff free basis and we're beginning with exactly the same laws and regulations as the rest of our European partners," Dr Fox said.
"And the only reason that we'll not get to this perfect arrangement would be if the politics of Europe got in the way.
"That would be a pity because it would just say that they were putting the politics of Europe above the prosperity of Europe."
And on the chance of Britain ever staying in the EU - as some EU leaders have rather wistfully suggested - Dr Fox has a straightforward answer.
"There's about as much chance of us staying in the European Union as of me finding the tooth fairy."
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A chronology of key events
| 1867 - European gold prospectors arrive, mining begins.
1885 - British proclaim a protectorate called Bechuanaland.
1890 - British protectorate is extended to Chobe river.
1950 - Chief of the Ngwato, Seretse Khama, is deposed and exiled by the British.
1952 - Rioters protest at Seretse Khama's exile.
1959 - Copper mines are established.
1960 - Bechuanaland People's Party (BPP) is established.
1960 December - Britain approves new constitution for Bechuanaland. Executive Council, Legislative Council and African Council are established.
1961 - Seretse Khama appointed to Executive Council.
1962 - Seretse Khama founds Bechuanaland Democratic Party (BDP), later to become Botswana Democratic Party.
1965 - Gaborone becomes administrative centre.
1965 - BDP wins legislative elections, first to be held under universal adult suffrage. Seretse Khama becomes prime minister.
Independence
1966 September - Bechuanaland is granted independence and becomes Republic of Botswana with Seretse Khama as president.
1967 - Diamonds discovered at Orapa.
1969 August - BDP wins general election. Khama is re-elected for another term.
1977 January - UN Security Council resolution demands Rhodesian hostilities on Botswana border cease.
1977 March - Botswana Defence Force is established.
1979 October - General elections: BDP wins majority, Khama is re-elected as president.
1980 - Botswana is founder member of Southern African Development Coordination Conference (SADCC), grouping which aims to reduce region's economic reliance on South Africa.
1980 - President Seretse Khama dies. Quett Masire, former vice-president, is made president after National Assembly vote.
1984 September - General elections: BDP wins majority, Quett Masire is re-elected as president.
1985 June - Buildings in Gaborone are raided and 12 people are killed by South African forces seeking alleged ANC members. Action is condemned by UN Security Council.
1989 October - General elections; BDP wins majority. National Assembly re-elects Masire as president.
1991 - 12,000 public sector workers sacked after strike action calling for increased wages.
1994 October - Legislative elections: BDP secures 53% of vote. Masire re-elected by National Assembly.
Kalahari relocations
1995 - Government begins relocating thousands of bushmen to settlements outside Central Kalahari Game Reserve.
1997 - Constitutional amendments approved. Presidency is limited to two five-year terms. Voting age lowered from 21 to 18.
1998 March/April - Masire resigns as president and retires. Festus Mogae, formerly vice president, becomes president under new constitutional arrangements.
1998 June - Botswana Congress Party established after split in BNF and is declared official opposition after most BNF deputies switch allegiance.
1999 September - Six-day state of emergency declared to resolve voter registration problem.
1999 October - General elections: BDP wins majority, Festus Mogae is confirmed as president.
1999 December - International Court of Justice grants control of Sedudu-Kasikili - a river island disputed by Botswana and Namibia - to Botswana.
2000 February/March - Devastating floods: More than 60,000 are made homeless.
Battle against Aids
2000 August - President Mogae says Aids drugs will be made available free of charge from 2001.
2001 March - National diamond corporation, Debswana, says it will subsidise drugs for workers with Aids.
2002 March - Kalahari bushmen take the government to court to challenge a forced eviction from their land; the case is dismissed on a technicality.
2003 September - Botswana begins erecting a fence along its border with Zimbabwe to stem an influx of Zimbabwean illegal immigrants.
2004 March - HIV infection rate falls to 37.5%; Botswana no longer has the world's highest rate of infection.
2004 August - Workers at Botswana's largest diamond-mining company strike over pay, after a court rules that such action is illegal. Some 1,000 workers are sacked.
2004 October - President Mogae secures a second term in a landslide election victory.
2006 December - A group of Bushmen wins a four-year legal battle to hold on to their ancestral lands.
2008 March - Botswana launches its own diamond trading company - the Diamond Trading Company Botswana (DTCB).
2008 April - Seretse Khama Ian Khama takes over as president.
2008 October - Botswana's former President Festus Mogae wins a $5m prize set up to encourage good governance in Africa.
2009 April - Botswana says it will halve diamond production because of falling demands for gems.
2009 October - Ruling BDP party wins elections, and another 5-year term for President Khama.
2009 November - Botswana stages a substantial economic recovery after stepping up diamond production again, a bank reports.
2010 November - Human rights group Survival International calls for a boycott of Botswanan diamonds, accusing the government of trying to force Basarwa bushmen away from their ancestral lands.
2011 January - An appeals court in Botswana overturns a July 2010 order depriving the indigenous Basarwa bushmen of the right to drill for water on their ancestral land.
2011 April - Civil servants begin what becomes a two-month strike over pay.
2012 January - Talks by three main opposition parties aimed at forming coalition fail, destroying hopes of challenge to ruling Botswana Democratic Party.
2012 November - Government says it will ban the commercial hunting of wildlife from 2014, citing a sharp decline in animal populations.
2013 November - Global diamond giant De Beers completes the move of its rough stone sales operation from London to Gaborone, in what is seen as a step towards turning Botswana into one of the world's top diamond hubs.
2014 July - Opposition leader Gomolemo Motswaledi dies in a car crash, just weeks before the general election. Police say it was an accident, his party suspects foul play.
2014 September - Editor of the Sunday Standard is arrested after the paper reported that the president was involved in a car accident.
2014 October - Ruling Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) wins the general elections with 33 of the 57 seats, giving Ian Khama a second term as president.
2014 November - Gay rights group wins legal recognition.
2018 April - Mokgweetsi Masisi becomes president and leader of the governing Botswana Democratic Party.
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Hold on to your hats!
| By Gerry HoltBBC News
From knock-you-off-your-feet winds to Prince George giggling in the chapel - here are some lesser-spotted moments from Princess Eugenie's big day....
Gone With the Wind
OK, so we know you must have clocked that it was a bit windy.
Well. More than a bit.
Storm Callum was certainly an uninvited guest - but it was all rather entertaining watching wedding-goers make their way into St George's Chapel without losing a fascinator.
The country held its breath as six-year-old pageboy Louis de Givenchy lost his footing. But thankfully the youngster was quickly back on his feet.
Here's Gwen Field, mother-in-law of one Robbie Williams, losing her hat to the wind live on TV:
And holding on to it tightly afterwards:
And another guest chasing down a hat:
Many of the guests seemed to enjoy getting (nearly) swept off their feet:
Prince George had mega lols in the chapel
We're not sure what it was but something tickled the young prince, who appeared to be having a whale of a time with the other pageboys and bridesmaids during the service.
What was so funny, George?
Hats off (or actually, on) to Cara Delevingne who sent the internet into meltdown
The model, a childhood friend of Princess Eugenie, walked into the wedding wearing a top hat and tails.
The internet's verdict: YES.
Delevingne later posted a picture of her outfit, side-by-side with another - of herself in similar clothes as a child.
The dress showed Princess Eugenie's back and there was a special reason behind it
Unless you were looking really closely you might not have noticed anything.
But Princess Eugenie wore a dress with a low back that showed off a scar from major surgery she had as a child.
She had previously hinted she might do this, telling ITV's This Morning it was important to "show people your scars".
Kate and Wills share a tender moment inside the chapel
A few eagle-eyed viewers spotted the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge holding hands as they waited for the ceremony to begin.
Meanwhile, other royal watchers noticed that Jack Brooksbank rather struggled when it came to putting the gold wedding band on his bride's finger.
It prompted some smiles from the couple, with the princess then collecting herself and helping the groom to slide the ring on to her finger.
The mother-of-the-bride's head gear had 'wings'
Sarah Ferguson's choice of hat divided opinion on social media.
Some likened the large winged bow to the golden snitch from the Harry Potter books.
A biodegradable rain poncho, some personalised shortbread and a big chocolate coin
What do these items have in common?
They were all to be found inside the royal wedding goody bags for guests, that's what.
All the essentials.
Pippa Middleton may have been heavily pregnant but that didn't stop her attending
Hello! magazine says Pippa is nine months' pregnant and is due "any day now".
Good luck, Pippa!
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Put your money where your mouth is? | Laura KuenssbergPolitical editor@bbclaurakon Twitter
Well, I'm told that when it comes to the NHS, ministers plan to do that with taxpayers' money, with a pay deal for NHS staff in England that could mean more than £4bn over the next three years.
More than a million staff, including nurses, porters and paramedics, could expect average increases of about 6%, after years of a tight spending settlement.
The idea is that the lowest paid will get the biggest hikes, with those on the lowest wages receiving the most significant rises, for example a porter's salary could rise from £15,000 to £19,000.
And contrary to recent suggestions, the unions and the government won't force staff to give up a day's holiday in return for bigger pay rises.
But insiders say that the deal, to be signed off at lunchtime, does include an agreement for staff and the Department of Health to look for ways of reducing rates of sickness in the NHS and changes to automatic pay rises, so called increments.
If the deal is formally announced, as expected, a consultation with staff will follow. But I'm told the biggest health unions, Unison and the Royal College of Nursing, are poised to back the agreement after months of negotiations with multiple unions, the government and NHS Employers.
Potentially, if the 'I's' are dotted and the 'T's crossed, NHS staff could look forward to pay increases as early as July.
The government indicated some time ago that the pay cap, which had been one of the main restrictions that held back public spending, was over.
But this deal could pave the way for expensive, even if overdue, pay deals for other parts of the public sector.
Crucially, sources say the deal will be fully funded by the Treasury, rather than coming out of existing NHS budgets.
The precise detail of what ministers say later will therefore be vital. But the move is likely to add to the growing sense, including in Tory party, that somehow, more cash for the health service needs to be found.
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Big cities tend to attract big characters. | By Chris BucklerBBC News
From Boris Johnson in London to Michael Bloomberg in New York, elected mayors are intended to be the face of the place they represent.
However, are they needed in cities all across England?
The government seems to think so. Its Localism Bill is expected to propose referenda in 12 of the biggest cities, giving voters the opportunity to decide if they want a mayor.
The aim is to reinvigorate local politics and, perhaps more importantly, make someone clearly responsible for local services at a time of cutbacks.
The new mayors would be encouraged to drive forward efficiencies and make better use of council budgets - to deliver more for less.
On the streets of Sheffield you will find plenty of people who are cynical about politicians.
"We've enough liars," said one man when I asked him if he would vote for a mayor.
More bureaucracy?
Many could see potential benefits, however.
"Sheffield is a big city and a mayor could put the issues forward a bit more strongly," said another shopper.
The cuts have already had an effect here. On the edge of the city centre, land has been cleared for a new retail quarter but the project has suffered a serious setback.
Government funding that had been promised for the Sevenstone development was suspended earlier this year. A smaller scheme is now having to be considered instead.
Business people believe that Sevenstone is the kind of project a mayor could champion.
"I think broadly we wouldn't say no to a mayor if they did a job," said Richard Wright, the executive director of Sheffield Chamber of Commerce.
"We would be against it if they didn't do a good job and they simply added to bureaucracy and cost."
Political change
There are already a dozen places across England where elected mayors exist, including Doncaster, just 20 miles away from Sheffield.
Political change there has been anything but simple and easy.
The relationship between the current mayor of Doncaster, Peter Davies, and the council has been incredibly fraught.
An Audit Commission report talked of "dysfunctional politics" and a "hatred of the mayor" among councillors.
A government team was even sent in to try to get the local authority back on track.
Mr Davies, who is an English Democrat, says he is not surprised by the antagonism from the Labour-controlled council.
"They've lost power," says the Doncaster mayor.
The councillors still have some influence which they have been determined to show.
Earlier this year they blocked Mr Davies' budget plans and politics in the town have been further complicated by his need to pick members of his mayoral cabinet from the council.
The English Democrats have no councillors in Doncaster.
Mr Davies accepts there have been difficulties: "That was only because certain neanderthal councillors didn't want a mayor and whoever the mayor was they were going to oppose.
"At the moment things are better and we are working together for the good of Doncaster."
Shaking up the system
Peter Davies is not shy of publicity which, combined with his "get tough" policies, helped him stand out in the mayoral campaign.
He was seen as an individual prepared to kick against the establishment.
Many future candidates may follow a similar manifesto, but that could lead to a risk of destabilising councils elsewhere.
However, there are some people who believe that shaking up the current political system could be worth it.
Christine Tooze, chief executive of Kickstart, a voluntary organisation in Sheffield which relies heavily on council funding, believes an elected mayor would be beneficial there if given real powers.
"We need some teeth in the city," she insisted.
"I really feel if we could have somebody who had some clout, like in London, that would be really key."
That may well depend on the individual - but voters will first have to decide if they want a mayor in their city at all.
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And then there were two. | By Andrew WalkerBBC World Service economics correspondent
The selection of a new director general of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) is entering its final stage.
The final two - from an initial list of eight candidates - are Nigeria's former finance minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and South Korean trade minister Yoo Myung-hee.
Both are female which means that if members of the WTO can coalesce around one them in the final stages of selection, it will be the first time the job has been taken by a woman.
Ms Okonjo-Iweala and Ms Yoo both have political and international experience and both were students at American universities.
Ms Okonjo-Iweala, who also has US nationality, has had two spells as finance minister and a short stint as foreign minister in Nigeria.
Much of her career was spent as an economist at the World Bank. She eventually rose to the position of managing director, essentially second in command at the institution. She has been an unsuccessful candidate for the top job at the bank.
She is currently chair of the board of the international vaccines alliance, Gavi.
She has not spent her career immersed in the details of trade policy as some other candidates did. But her work as a development economist and finance minister means she has often had to deal with international trade.
She describes trade as "a mission and a passion".
Ms Okonjo-Iweala would be the first African to be director general of the WTO.
Ms Yoo is much more of a trade specialist.
Her statement to the WTO's general council hinted at a literal lifetime in the area - she said she was born the same year that South Korea acceded to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, which became one of the key elements of the WTO's rule book.
She started her career in trade, she said, in the year the WTO was born, 1995.
She has been involved in some of South Korea's key trade negotiations in that period, including with China and the US. She makes a point of her "deep knowledge and insight into the details of various areas of trade agreements".
Under stress
Both candidates were keen to point out their abilities in bringing sides together in negotiations.
That is a skill the successful candidate will have to draw on extensively.
It is important to remember that a WTO director general can only make progress if they can get the member countries on board.
It has been said that the DG has no executive power; that they are more like a butler announcing to the member countries) that dinner is served.
But the WTO is an organisation under stress. Two of the biggest commercial powers on the planet - China and the US - are embroiled in bitter trade conflict.
The US has some substantial concerns about the WTO. Many of them pre-date President Trump, but his administration has taken a less collaborative approach to pursuing them.
The US has undermined the WTO's ability to carry out one of its main functions - settling trade disputes between member countries.
It has refused to allow the body which hears appeals to appoint new members, effectively judges. That reflects US concerns that the body's judgements were going beyond the WTO rulebook. The US block has left it unable to take new appeal cases.
It doesn't mean the dispute settlement system doesn't work at all, but it is seriously impaired.
In terms of diversity, the WTO seems to be heading into new territory. It will, almost certainly, have a woman as Director General for the first time a woman.
The regional representation might also break new ground, if the African candidate gets the job - there has been an Asian director general before, from Thailand.
If all goes to plan we will know who it is by early November.
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"Nobody is safe". | Karishma VaswaniAsia business correspondent@KarishmaBBCon Twitter
That was the stark assessment a long-time China watcher gave me while discussing what's happening to one of the country's richest men, Wang Jianlin.
Mr Wang, once considered a Beijing favourite, seems to have fallen foul of the establishment.
His business, Dalian Wanda, grew into one of the country's most prominent property developers.
And overseas it has invested heavily too, most noticeably in Hollywood - controlling the AMC cinema chain as well as Legendary Entertainment, co-producer of hit films including Godzilla and The Dark Knight Rises.
'Unpredictable'
But China is now reportedly ordering banks and financiers to stop lending to several high profile firms - including Wanda.
That forced it to suddenly sell off theme parks and hotels to raise cash and reduce debt. A subsequent rejigging of the deal just added to the picture of chaos.
"The business strategy of the company is changing, and is a bit unpredictable," Cindy Huang from S&P Global Ratings told me.
"Just a couple of weeks ago, the chairman was signing new theme park projects...but then decided to sell off 91% of the company's theme parks to a rival developer. The transaction is unusual."
Rhino hunt
That's putting it mildly. So what could lead a smart and savvy business operator like Mr Wang to make such a seemingly crazy U-turn?
Well there's speculation he couldn't do much else. Certainly if reports are to be believed, the clampdown on companies spending money overseas has come from the very top - President Xi Jinping himself.
And that's because while many in the West are concerned about "black swans" - rare, unexpected events that threaten financial markets - China has a different animal in its sights: "grey rhinos".
The term refers to large, visible problems in an economy which are often ignored - until they start moving fast and trampling everything in their wake.
And in this case the term it's being applied to a group of the country's corporate giants which despite growing so big and borrowing so much, were seen as untouchable because of their political connections.
But not any more.
A recent front page report in state mouthpiece People's Daily, warned of the need to avoid these grey rhinos, which as well as Dalian Wanda, also include:
Stocks and bonds of these companies fell as investors struggled to make sense of Beijing's new economic priorities.
"No one will touch these companies for a while," Dickie Wong of Kingston Financial Services told me.
"And don't expect these companies to invest or acquire any assets overseas. They will go quiet for a while."
'Sympathetic'
In the past though, companies like Dalian Wanda had been actively encouraged by Beijing to go forth and conquer.
As I wrote in a piece last year about Chinese acquisitions, China Inc. went on a spending spree and was among the most active investors in UK, US and Australian property markets.
That splurge fuelled by cheap loans from state-owned banks. The powers-that-be in Beijing approved of this economic colonialism because, frankly, it made China look good.
"I'm a little bit sympathetic to Wanda, HNA and the like," Christopher Balding, an economics and politics professor at Peking University told me.
"Twelve months ago what they were doing was being heavily encouraged by Chinese regulators... because Beijing wanted to improve its soft power. Now, they've clearly fallen into a bit of a mess."
Opening up... in one direction
And this isn't just a Chinese problem.
If China's corporations stop spending cash overseas, then that's that's going to have knock-on effects for the global economy.
Chinese money has helped to push property prices up in many parts of the world (though that's not always a good thing, as those trying to get on the housing ladder in cities like London, Sydney and Melbourne will emphatically tell you).
And if demand dries up as Chinese businesses keep their hands in their pockets, global asset prices may drop too.
But what this really shows, above all else, is a government reasserting control.
And it's doing so in a way that directly contradicts Beijing's claims to be developing an economy more driven by free markets.
That opening up might be happening in one direction - for example allowing money into China through the Bond Connect programme and China's inclusion on the MSCI emerging markets index.
But from Beijing's recent moves, getting money out of China is becoming much harder.
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Warning: Contains graphic content | By Catrin Nye, Edward Main & Joanna Jolly BBC Victoria Derbyshire programme & BBC Trending
Scrolling through the Instagram feed on her phone, 22-year-old Ingebjørg Blindheim explains why she has been given the nickname "the lifeguard".
"I see a lot of people who want to die," explains the young Norwegian.
"I'm not just going to watch someone saying they're going to kill themselves and ignore it and hope for the best."
Intervening to help suicidal Instagram users is not a role Ingebjørg would have chosen for herself. She doesn't work for the social media site, and she isn't paid for what she does. Nor is she formally qualified to offer help, having received no training in mental healthcare. Instead she feels compelled to act, realising she's often the last chance of help for those posting their despair online.
"I feel like when I'm not on the phone watching, people might do something to themselves and no-one will see," she says.
This means monitoring Instagram constantly, identifying those who are close to the edge and alerting the police and ambulance services. She admits to having sleepless nights. She knows that being so distracted by her phone can anger her family and friends, but she worries that without her vigilance, someone might die.
"It goes bad, because it has done before," she says.
Ingebjørg is currently keeping track of around 450 private Instagram accounts - ones that need approval from their owners before you are allowed to follow them. Most of these belong to young women who post about their darkest feelings, though there are a few boys as well. It's a secretive world of private thoughts, images and confessions, governed by an unwritten "no snitching" rule.
When she calls the police, she is careful not to say too much about the community for fear of alienating its members. She often feels like a detective, scrabbling around to find out as much information as she can about an anonymous user to pass on.
The reaction she receives from professionals is mixed. Sometimes she is thanked for acting, other times she is disbelieved. Earlier this year, Ingebjørg says she tried to get police to intervene in a case where a girl said she was going to take her own life. She says officers said the girl had threatened to do it 16 times before and they didn't believe her. But she says the next day, they called Ingebjørg to tell her the girl had gone through with her threat.
"I begged them to check up on her to see if she was OK, and they didn't take it seriously," Ingebjørg says.
Find out more
Trending: The Instagram suicide network
Victoria Derbyshire: The network linked to deaths worldwide
BBC Action Line: mental health support
The Norwegian knows the power of online sharing from her own personal experience. As a young teen, struggling with an eating disorder, she began to follow Twitter accounts where others posted openly about their anorexia or self-harm.
"I saw they got a lot of attention from people who understood and cared and I wanted the same because I didn't feel that I belonged with my friends," she says.
This support is what users feel is the positive side of online communities. Ingebjørg says they can be a place to feel heard and be understood when others, especially adults and health care professionals, may sometimes appear dismissive or judgmental.
But these Instagram networks are anything but safe spaces. Whatever good some people find in them is outweighed by the bad, Ingebjørg says.
There is a reward for posting extreme thoughts and images - the darker the thought, the deeper the cut, the more likes and attention you receive, she says. They can foster a sense of competition, and act as a how-to manual for ways to harm or even kill yourself.
"I think the communities make people worse because they give you ideas on how you can kill yourself, how you can starve yourself, or get rid of the food you eat, and how you can hide your illness from people," Ingebjørg says.
After she posted pictures of her own emaciated body on Twitter, Ingebjørg was contacted by a therapist who warned her the images were encouraging others.
She says self-harmers she knew moved from Twitter to Instagram as it was easier to hide what they were posting from people they didn't want to see the content.
Four years ago, Ingebjørg and her 15-year-old best friend were both being treated as in-patients for their mental health issues.
Both were discharged around the same time. Ingebjørg was confident that she would get better, but her friend threatened to take her own life if she was sent home. The girl posted a picture of rail tracks prompting Ingebjørg to call her, pleading with her to stay safe. Her friend reassured her she would, but hours later Ingebjørg received news of her death.
"That's why I'm doing the things that I do," says Ingebjørg.
"I promised myself that after I lost my best friend, I would do anything I could to prevent people from having to feel the feeling I had when it happened," she says.
The investigator
While Ingebjørg monitors her Instagram network from her home in Bergen, across Norway, in the capital Oslo, an investigative journalist has also been following the closed, disturbing world.
Annemarte Moland works for the state-owned broadcaster NRK. She first came across the online community a year ago when she travelled to a small Norwegian town to research a story about three teenage girls who had killed themselves. One of the girls had a private Instagram account where she had shared thoughts of suicide and self-harm.
"The police told me she had a 100 followers across the country, but they didn't do anything more with it," Annemarte says.
"I thought, this is strange. A hundred followers? Who are these people?"
After the story had been published, Annemarte was approached by a young woman who told her that there were at least 10 other girls in the same Instagram network who had also taken their own lives.
Realising she had stumbled across a far bigger story, the journalist tried to make contact with the secretive network. At first she set up a dummy profile using dark, gloomy but non-violent images to connect with other girls.
Annemarte was surprised at how quickly Instagram recommended dozens of profiles for her to follow, which were sharing self-harm and suicide material.
'I lost my daughter'
The journalist moved on to trying to confirm the suicides she had been told about, tracking down and calling family members. This led her to Heidi whose daughter, Andrine, had killed herself two years before, just before her 18th birthday. When Heidi said she still had her daughter's mobile phone, but hadn't touched it since her death, Annemarte realised she might have found a way into the network.
"Heidi said, "I've always known there is something on the phone I don't want to see"," says Annemarte, recounting the story.
At the time, Annemarte was in her office in Oslo and Heidi was at home in the city of Tromso, in Norway's far north. Annemarte advised her not to open the phone alone, but Heidi felt compelled to go ahead. She knew her daughter had had a secret Instagram life because some of her online friends had been in touch since her death. But she wasn't prepared for the graphic images that Andrine had posted.
"Heidi called me back and told me that Andrine had killed herself online," says Annemarte.
"She documented it - like, every second of her suicide."
Soon after, Heidi travelled to Oslo to go through Andrine's Instagram accounts together with Annemarte.
"I found pictures, videos, text. Some were very funny. In some it was so good to see her alive because she was so joyful and she showed that part of her as well as the sad side," says Heidi.
But other posts were heartbreaking to watch, like one showing nothing but a black screen to the sound of Andrine's crying. Heidi found pictures of serious self-harm and videos in which Andrine said she couldn't take it anymore and wanted to die. The hardest posts to see were the ones that documented the last hours before Andrine's suicide.
"It was almost like she was screaming her death," Heidi says.
From Andrine's phone, Annemarte began to build up a picture of how many other young people were inside her dark Instagram network.
Suicide network
Andrine had around 130 followers, which Annemarte says is typical for a Norwegian account. By looking at the followers of Andrine's followers, the journalist was able to identify 26,000 accounts in total. From here she removed all the accounts that were public, bringing the number down to 5,000. She further narrowed down her search by focusing only on accounts that used depressive imagery, words or emojis.
She says she found more than 1,000 similar dark accounts, all within two steps of Andrine's profile. They included young women and teenagers in at least 20 different countries, including Denmark, Britain, Germany, Australia and the US.
By analysing these, Annemarte and her colleagues were able to identify patterns. Most of the accounts were held by girls with an average age of 19. Most had some sort of mental health issue, which ranged from feeling a bit down to severe depression and anxiety. Many had been in and out of hospital.
A graphic that NRK put together shows the network stretching out across the world like a dark spider's web, with Andrine at its centre.
Like Ingebjørg, Annemarte could see its attraction. Mixed in with posts about self-harm and death, the girls behaved like ordinary teenagers, sharing pictures of new clothes or videos of themselves dancing to music.
"There's lots of support and attention," says Annemarte.
"They all have in common that they don't believe they can get help anywhere else. So they meet up to try to help each other and support each other on their darkest days."
But the journalist could also see the network's danger. She noted how the darkest or most suicidal material received the most attention. Supporters would post heart emojis and phrases like "keep strong" or "hold on".
"I call it the upside down version of giving actual support because these are quite sick girls trying to help quite sick girls. It's sort of a reversed place," says Annemarte.
Because the network was so private, there were no outside voices moderating the content or providing helpful or professional advice. After spending time inside it, the journalist began to sense the girls were inadvertently encouraging each other to go further.
"I felt like they had been pushing each other closer and closer to the edge. But when it gets to the edge, they all say, 'Oh no, don't do it. Stay alive'," she says.
Heidi believes this kind of group behaviour would have had a significant effect on Andrine.
"I think that the community meant everything for her. It ended so badly because she was very easily encouraged by other people since she was young," she says.
Through the year-long investigation, Annemarte was able to confirm that at least 15 Norwegian girls from the network NRK mapped have killed themselves.
"They are playing with their lives," she says of the community as a whole.
"If someone cuts themselves, they get loads of hearts and likes. How can you like somebody's picture when you've cut deep through your arm?"
Instagram's response
From February this year, Instagram banned all graphic images of self-harm and restricted videos and pictures showing suicidal themes. The decision followed the death of the British teenager, Molly Russell, who took her own life in 2017 after viewing graphic content on the platform.
In the past month, the US-based company has extended this ban to include memes, drawings and cartoons that promote suicide or show suicide and self-harm methods.
But Annemarte feels these safeguards do not go far enough. Although there is less graphic content on Instagram since the ban came into place, she says the members of the network have found ways around the platform's restrictions.
"It's still on Instagram, but going more underground. It's like it's less graphic but even more suicidal," she says.
"When girls now post their suicidal attempts, they will post an illustrative image from their day-to-day life, maybe an image of them lying in their bed, and say in the text, 'This is my final day, I don't want to live anymore'."
The journalist is also concerned that the social media site continues to recommend users who post harmful content to other users - something which Instagram said in February that it would stop
"We've seen girls trying to kill themselves and on the same day being recommended to other suicidal girls. So this is how the network keeps growing," Annemarte says.
Instagram has responded by saying they recognise that mental health is a complex issue and they need to take a balanced approach.
"We fundamentally believe that there is a place on Instagram to come and express yourself, even if you're having a really tough time," says Tara Hopkins, Instagram's head of public policy for Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
"But we have to strike the right balance between ensuring that there is that space for expression, with making sure that we are keeping people protected from potentially seeing what could be really harming or disturbing," she says.
Hopkins says Instagram is constantly in touch with health experts and NGOs like the Samaritans, who have advised the company that removing all references to suicide and self-harm could further stigmatise mental health.
At the same time, she says the site uses a combination of human moderators and machine learning to identify and remove harmful material before it is reported. Hopkins says it is vital that users still report upsetting content so the company can learn from the complaints.
In response to Annemarte's concern that Instagram is continuing to recommend dangerous accounts, Hopkins says once an account is flagged, it will not be recommended to other users.
"Honestly our job will never be done because we've chosen to take a nuanced, and I think a very balanced, approach to this," says Hopkins.
"We are really deeply committed from the top down at Instagram to getting this right and to making sure that we have that balance right."
But Heidi and some other parents believe their daughters would not be dead if they hadn't used Instagram.
"When I have seen what's posted and how active Andrine was on that Instagram community, and heard what the other girls had said, I realised that Instagram basically took my daughter's life. That's what I feel," she says.
"Because all the other girls in Instagram were like her audience. She had someone to show everything to. So I feel that if she didn't have Instagram, she would have sought more help in real life."
Ingebjørg says there is a wider issue to address. Deleting Instagram accounts, she says, would move the problem to other social media platforms.
"They are just going to find new communities or new websites or something. I think the health care system has to be better so that people don't feel like they have to post things. They could talk to a therapist or family member instead of posting."
NRK has published its investigation revealing the existence of the network, and in the process has brought Ingebjørg's work to wider attention.
The Norwegian Minister of Health Bent Høie told NRK he was unaware that the suicide network existed, and he said that a new suicide prevention strategy would need to take it into account. He also said he had asked child and adolescent psychiatric units to consult young people on how to improve confidence in their services.
Ingebjørg wants to be able to put down the burden she took upon herself. She would like to move on with her life and fulfil her ambition of training to be a cancer nurse.
For Heidi, she hopes the publicity about the investigation will help save lives.
"I didn't talk to Andrine about Instagram because I was afraid she would be angry and do more self-harm. But I regret that I didn't do that. So to another mum I would say, don't make the same mistake.
"Talk to your daughter, talk about it."
Original NRK investigation conducted by Annemarte Moland, Ruben Solvang, Even Kjolleberg and Ståle Hansen.
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Lana Del Rey is in a good mood. | By Mark SavageBBC Music reporter
She's just been in the studio with Radio 1's Nick Grimshaw, trying to make him giggle while he goes about some serious radio presenting business; and she's daydreaming about her favourite UK delicacy - a sandwich from Pret.
When she discovers she's in the same building as the BBC newsroom, the star politely asks for a guided tour.
"I never get to do stuff like this," marvels the singer, as she walks wide-eyed past the studios and satellite feeds.
In this context, Del Rey is oddly anonymous. Jane Hill, who is preparing to read the lunchtime news on BBC One, doesn't even look up when the superstar squeezes past her desk.
It's a rare luxury for someone who's followed by paparazzi and the all-seeing cameras of TMZ when she's at home in California.
She addresses the lack of privacy on her new album, Lust For Life, where a song called 13 Beaches finds Del Rey searching for a spot "past Ventura and lenses plenty" where she can enjoy a romantic moment in seclusion.
When we sit down to chat, she reveals those same concerns stopped her attending the women's marches in Los Angeles, earlier this year.
"I drove my sister and her girlfriends to the marches," she says. "I thought about [joining in] but I felt, like, not really sure how it would go.
"I didn't really want to be a distraction to that group of 10 girls who were going. I wanted them to think about the actual march and not about me standing right next to them."
But the star is making her contribution in other ways. A new song, God Bless America And All The Beautiful Women In It, is an ode to womankind ("may you stand proud and strong"); while Coachella - Woodstock In My Mind, mines the contradictions of dancing at a festival "whilst watching tensions with North Korea mount".
It's a new dimension for Del Rey's lyrics - which have traditionally concerned themselves with "looking for love in all the wrong places".
"I kind of got jolted into the real world again," she says.
"Just being in California, it's such a liberal state, I was bombarded with the news every day. So my studio became like a think tank - during the elections it was a constant conversation with my producer and engineers and assistant engineers.
"And then obviously during Coachella, that news broke about North Korea and pointing missiles at each other. That was a bit of a rude awakening."
Del Rey's work rate is astonishing. Lust For Life is her fifth album in six years - and it bursts at the seams, with 16 tracks all co-written with her longtime producer Rick Nowels.
They record everything at his studio in Santa Monica, just blocks away from the beach, so it "never feels like work," she says.
"Just walking in every day and having a coffee together and taking a walk, and then we start.
"So it doesn't ever feel like I'm pumping them [the songs] out. Although it's definitely a blessing that I've been able to put out so much music."
On Lust For Life, the singer has opened up musically, as well as lyrically. The title track is a pulse-raising duet with The Weeknd, while Summer Bummer almost self-destructs, dissolving into digital noise and blacked-out beats, with Lana's vocals barely holding the song together.
She's also welcomed collaborators into her world for the first time - absorbing them into her aesthetic, rather than capitalising on chart trends.
"It was really fun!" she says of working with A$AP Rocky and The Weeknd. "I wanted those guys to add a little fire, a little energy to the record."
More daunting was inviting rock legend Stevie Nicks to duet on Beautiful People, Beautiful Problems.
"I was definitely nervous," says Del Rey of the recording session.
"She got off the plane at 10:30, so she didn't get to the studio until midnight - and she just breezed in, black on black, gold everywhere. She was kind of a vision.
"When she started singing, she told me she wanted to hear me sing something, too. And then I really freaked out!
"I said to her over the mic, 'I just sound so quiet compared to you.' And she was like, 'That's ok, you can be my little echo!'
"I thought that was so cool. I'm not as loud as her. My voice isn't as low as hers. But she loves it for what it is.
"That, as it was happening, was a career-defining moment for me."
Other songs on the album had a more troubled gestation. Del Rey says the closing track, Get Free, originally had a different title, and much more personal lyrics.
"That song started out really revealing," she says. "I wanted to summarise my whole experience over the last six years; and then I realised, I don't want to reveal everything."
Once the initial version was "out of my system", she says, the recording was "deleted completely then started from scratch".
The lyrics became more vague and more hopeful; and the re-recorded version ends with Del Rey referencing Neil Young: "I want to move out of the black, into the blue".
"I think it would have been hard for me to do interviews if I'd said a couple of particular things that I was thinking of," she says of the original.
"Kind of the way Ultraviolence did. It was harder to promote that record."
She's referring to the title track of her second album, which depicted Del Rey in a destructive, abusive relationship. Del Rey has previously hinted the song refers to her association with an "underground sect" in New York, which was controlled by a charismatic guru.
In concert, she has recently stopped singing the song's key line, "he hit me and it felt like a kiss".
"I don't feel comfortable with that lyric any more," she says now. "Whatever my concept of affection was at the time, it does not serve me any more. Obviously. Hopefully."
On Lust For Life she seems happier, more outward-looking than before. On stage, she's more confident, too.
Launching the album at a one-off gig in London, she's forced to abandon her performance of the opening track, Love.
Earlier in her career, she might have frozen. Now, she just sings it a capella, with the crowd stepping in as her own personal choir.
"I'm not exactly sure what happened, but I think my keyboard player was playing the wrong chords," she explains. "I was leaning in to him and saying, 'That's not it, that's not it' and he was like, 'That is it, trust me'.
"I listened for 10 seconds and I was like, 'Damn, I definitely can't get it'. I couldn't get it in rehearsal, either. So I just told him to stop. I feel bad - I was kind of abrasive.
"But that song is at the heart of the record and I thought it'd be weird if I didn't do it. So, luckily the people who were at the show knew the words and they sang along with me."
She listens with glee to a recording of the song - explaining how, because she wears in-ear headphones, she hadn't realised how loud the crowd had been.
"I'm so glad," she says. "Being in the audience, did you feel that, too?"
I tell her it was like being in church. "Oh, stop!" she beams, and bursts into laughter.
That good mood isn't going anywhere soon.
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A chronology of key events:
| 7th-10th cent AD - Hindu and Buddhist Dvaravati culture, thought to be of the ethnic Mon people, predominates.
10th-14th cent - Southern Thailand is ruled by the mainly Mon Lavo Kingdom, but with growing influence from the Khmer neighbouring Empire. (modern-day Cambodia). The Tai people - the antecedents of modern ethnic Thais - start to move southwards into the area.
1238-1448 - Thai-speaking Sukhothai kingdom expands its rule further south, coming to dominate much of modern-day Thailand, before being eclipsed by a rival Thai kingdom in the south, Ayutthaya.
1350-1767 - Ayutthaya kingdom gradually brings Thailand under its control and becomes a major power in Southeast Asia. At its greatest extent around 1600, it rules parts of modern-day Cambodia, Laos and Burma.
1448 - King Ramesuan joins Ayutthaya and Sukhothai in personal union.
1590-1605 - Reign of Naresuan. Seen as Ayutthaya's greatest king, he ends a period of Burmese overlordship and briefly conquers Cambodia and parts of southern Burma.
1767 - Invading Burmese forces sack the capital, Ayutthaya, bringing an end to the kingdom.
1768-1782 Under Taksin the Great, an ethnic Thai Chinese, the shortlived Thonburi Kingdom re-establishes Thai control. Taksin is toppled by a coup launched by General Chao Phraya Chakri, who founds a new dynasty centred on Bangkok.
Rise of modern Thailand
1782 - Beginning of the Chakri dynasty under King Rama I, which rules to this day. The country is known as Siam. New capital of Bangkok founded.
1851-1868 - Reign of King Mongkut (Rama IV), who embraces Western innovations and initiates Thailand's modernisation.
1868-1910 - Reign of King Chulalongkorn. Employment of Western advisers to modernise Siam's administration and commerce. Railway network developed.
1917 - Siam becomes ally of Great Britain in World War I.
1932 - Bloodless coup against absolute monarch King Prajadhipok. Constitutional monarchy introduced with parliamentary government.
1939 - Siam changes its name to Thailand ("Land of the Free").
1941 - Japanese forces land. After negotiations Thailand allows Japanese to advance towards British-controlled Malay Peninsula, Singapore and Burma.
1942 - Thailand declares war on Britain and US, but Thai ambassador in Washington refuses to deliver declaration to US government.
Post-war uncertainty
1945 - End of World War II. Thailand compelled to return territory it had seized from Laos, Cambodia and Malaya. Exiled King Ananda returns.
1946 - King Ananda dies in mysterious shooting incident.
1947 - Military coup by the wartime, pro-Japanese leader Phibun Songkhram. The military retain power until 1973.
1965 onwards - Thailand permits US to use bases there during the Vietnam War. Thai troops fight in South Vietnam.
Brief civilian rule
1973 - Student riots in Bangkok bring about the fall of the military government. Free elections are held but the resulting governments lack stability.
1976 - Military takes over again.
1978 - New constitution promulgated.
1991 - Military coup, the 17th since 1932. A civilian, Anand Panyarachun, is installed as prime minister.
1992 - Elections in September see Chuan Leekpai, leader of the Democratic Party, chosen as prime minister.
1995 - Government collapses. Banharn Silpa-archa, of the Thai Nation party, elected prime minister.
1996 - Banharn government resigns, accused of corruption. Chavalit Yongchaiyudh of the New Aspiration party wins elections.
Financial turmoil
1997 - Asian financial crisis: The baht currency falls sharply against the dollar, leading to bankruptcies and unemployment. The IMF steps in. Chuan Leekpai becomes prime minister.
1998 - Tens of thousands of migrant workers are sent back to their countries of origin. Prime Minister Chuan involves the opposition in his government in order to push through economic reforms.
2001 January - New Thai Love Thai party wins elections. Thaksin Shinawatra forms coalition government.
2004 January-March - Martial law is imposed in largely-Muslim south after more than 100 killed in a wave of attacks blamed on ethnic-Malay separatists.
Tsunami
2004 December - Thousands of people die when a massive tsunami, triggered by an undersea earthquake off the coast of Sumatra, devastates communities on the south-west coast, including the resort of Phuket.
2006 September-October - Military leaders stage a bloodless coup while Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra is at the UN General Assembly. Retired General Surayud Chulanont is appointed interim prime minister.
2007 August - Voters approve a new, military-drafted constitution in a referendum.
2008 February - Return to civilian rule after December elections. Samak Sundaravej of the Thaksin-linked People Power Party (PPP) is sworn in as prime minister. Ousted premier Thaksin Shinawatra returns from exile.
2008 August - Thaksin flees to Britain with his family after failing to appear in court to face corruption charges.
2010 March-May - Tens of thousands of Thaksin supporters - in trademark red shirts - paralyse parts of central Bangkok with months-long protests calling for early elections. Troops eventually storm the protesters' barricades, leaving 91 dead.
2011 July - The pro-Thaksin Pheu Thai party wins a landslide victory in elections. Yingluck Shinawatra - the sister of Mr Thaksin Shinawatra - becomes prime minister.
2013 February - Government and separatists in south sign first-ever peace talks deal.
2014 May - Constitutional court orders Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra and several ministers out of office over alleged irregularities in appointment of security adviser. Army seizes power in coup.
2016 August - Voters approve a new constitution giving the military continuing influence over the country's political life.
Death of King Bhumibol Adulyadej
2016 October - King Bhumibol Adulyadej, the world's longest reigning monarch, dies at the age of 88 after 70 years on the throne.
2016 - December - Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn is proclaimed king.
2017 April - King Vajiralongkorn signs the new, military-drafted constitution that paves the way for a return to democracy.
2019 March - General election sees former general Prayut Chan-o-cha returned to power as prime minister.
2019 November - Suspected separatists kill at least 15 people in southern Thailand, in one of the country's worst attacks in years.
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Do you recognise this actress? | You've probably seen her in a million TV shows - but you could be forgiven for not recognising her in her latest role.
We'll give you a few clues: Black Books, Episodes, Friday Night Dinner, Green Wing.
Yes - it's Tamsin Greig.
So why has she dared to be seen on stage in a Ms Trunchball-style outfit and long hair?
Well, it's for her role in the National Theatre's new production of Twelfth Night.
'Masterstroke of casting'
She plays the role of Malvolia in the production.
"Hang on, there's nobody called Malvolia in Twelfth Night," the Shakespeare scholars among you are probably thinking.
Yes, well, this is a gender-bending production which sees Greig play the role as a woman rather than a man.
It adds a whole new layer of enjoyment to a play with a gender-swapping plot at its heart.
The show opened on Wednesday evening - and critics were impressed with Greig's performance.
"Tamsin Greig is brilliant in the part. Every gesture is full of attitude," wrote the Evening Standard's Henry Hitchings.
"It's a performance of wit and immense poise, which perfectly captures the character's neuroses about rank."
Natasha Tripney of The Stage said: "As Malvolio - here Malvolia - Tamsin Greig joins the list of women playing major Shakespearean roles. It's a masterstroke of casting.
"She doesn't just steal her scenes she starts up her own black market. Hers is a performance of great comic skill."
The Telegraph's Dominic Cavendish said Greig "makes the part her own" although he was slightly less warm about the production overall, awarding it three stars.
"It's hit and miss - or hit and mister (whatever suits) - more a straightforward romp than a strange tragicomedy of unrequited love and mistaken identity."
Twelfth Night is at the Olivier Theatre in London until 17 April and will be broadcast live to cinemas on Thursday 6 April.
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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"We have been gloriously happy." | By Giancarlo RinaldiSouth Scotland reporter, BBC Scotland news website
The inscription on Flora Murray's gravestone at Penn in Buckinghamshire - a long way from her native Dumfriesshire - gives little hint of what she lived through.
Along with partner Louisa Garrett-Anderson she overcame enormous obstacles in order to be allowed to treat soldiers during World War One.
The story of their Endell Street hospital in London - staffed almost entirely by women - is Radio 4's Book of the Week.
Author Wendy Moore stumbled upon her inspiration in the Wellcome Library.
A painting on the wall by war artist Francis Dodd - showing an operating theatre where all the doctors were female - got her "really hooked".
The story of how Dr Murray, from near Dalton in southern Scotland, and Dr Garrett-Anderson, of Aldeburgh in Suffolk, set up that hospital is one of great tenacity.
Ms Moore describes their almost entirely female-staffed facility as "totally unthinkable" and "totally unprecedented".
In 1865 the first woman trained in Britain qualified as a doctor - Dr Garrett-Anderson's mother, Elizabeth - but on the eve of WW1 they were still restricted to treating only women and children.
Ms Moore said that meant women were "effectively barred" from working in mainstream hospitals or getting "well-paid and well-respected" jobs in surgery.
It left Dr Murray and Dr Garrett-Anderson "angry and frustrated" at the inability to progress in their profession despite about 10 years' experience.
"Partly because of that discrimination they had both joined the Suffragette movement," Ms Moore said.
Dr Garrett-Anderson was jailed for smashing a window while Dr Murray was seen as the "honorary doctor" of the movement treating, among others, Emmeline Pankhurst.
When war came they wanted to "do their bit" but also realised it was a "unique opportunity".
"They didn't bother to go to the War Office because they knew that would be rejected," said Ms Moore.
"Instead, they went to the French Red Cross and they accepted them.
"They gave them a brand new hotel in Paris and they were allowed to then convert that into a hospital for the wounded."
A second hospital was set up near Boulogne and, slowly, the British Army came round to the work the female doctors were doing.
It would eventually lead to them being asked to run a military hospital in London - Endell Street, a former workhouse, with more than 500 beds.
Over the next few years they would treat more than 24,000 seriously injured soldiers.
Dr Garrett-Anderson gained a reputation as a "very skilled and very delicate surgeon".
Her partner - a physician with experience in anaesthesia - was the chief doctor so she was "basically in charge of the hospital" and its 180 staff, the vast majority of them women.
"She was described as being very Scottish by one commentator and dour - another Scottish stereotype," Ms Moore said.
"They were both formidable women, very tough and very strict with their staff - they were quite disciplinarian.
"They were not easy-going women - they didn't set out to make people like them - but then they had to run a military hospital which was as good as any hospital run by a male."
Seen as something of a curiosity at first, Endell Street soon became recognised as "every bit as good" as any facility operated by men.
Ms Moore added: "Although it was a really harrowing experience to treat all these wounded men, they felt they were doing good."
"They obviously did save lots of men from death and disability."
Endell Street stayed open for a year after the war to help treat the victims of the Spanish Flu outbreak.
"That was really the hardest time for them because throughout the war they had managed to save lots of lives and work together," Ms Moore said.
"But when the flu hit they had nothing they could do against this invisible enemy.
"More patients died per week of the flu than died in the hospital during the war and also several staff died of the flu."
The victories that the pioneering medical couple had won, however, evaporated when the conflict ended when male doctors wanted their old jobs back and women were "simply expected" to return to their former roles.
Ms Moore said it would take "many more decades" before that situation changed.
The pair retired in 1921 and Dr Murray died a couple of years later, aged 54. She would be outlived by her partner by 20 years.
More than a century may have passed since their Endell Street hospital closed, but its story remains a remarkable one.
Around the BBC
BBC Radio 4 - Book of the Week
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A quarter of one per cent. | Kamal AhmedBusiness editor@bbckamalon Twitter
It doesn't sound like much - but its significance is mighty.
After nearly a decade of what has been, essentially, a global economic effort - and experiment - to save the world from financial calamity, the Federal Reserve, the central bank to the world's largest economy, has decided, finally, to try a touch of "normalisation".
Getting economies "back to normal" was always the hope during that remarkable time when the financial system was in danger of going bust.
Central banks around the world slashed interest rates to near zero and created billions of pounds of support for governments and the wider economy.
I'm not sure anyone thought that, eight years on, we would still be in a near zero interest rate world. Or, in cases such as the eurozone, a negative interest rate world.
Fundamental damage
The financial crisis - a banking crisis which so damaged confidence and put the world in "risk-off" mode - more fundamentally damaged the global economy than many initially predicted.
Paying off debts - deleveraging - and not taking on more risk became the order of the day for governments that had over-borrowed and banks, businesses and consumers that had become drunk on easy credit.
Now the Federal Reserve has moved interest rates up a small notch.
The hike is a "doveish" one, with the Fed statement making it clear that any future increases will be "gradual".
Primarily, the rate rise is a signal about the strength of the US economy and shows that the chairwoman of the Fed, Janet Yellen, believes that the long march back to more normal economic conditions can begin.
Employment levels in America are high and growth is running at just over 2%.
Ms Yellen, a cautious governor, does not want to overdo it. She says the pace of growth in the US economy is "modest". And inflation is below target.
Global implications
When America stirs, the rest of the world takes notice.
Rising US interest rates could mean higher debt repayments for emerging market governments and businesses - as the amount owed is denominated in dollars.
And with higher interest rates in America, investment capital will be encouraged across the Atlantic and away from Asia in the hunt for better returns.
That could affect Europe as well.
On the upside, the stronger dollar which has followed the rise might be good for European and Asian economies as it means exports to America are cheaper.
UK interest
Could it increase pressure on Mark Carney, the Governor of the Bank of England, and his colleagues on the Monetary Policy Committee, to raise interest rates in Britain in 2016?
Many say yes.
The UK economy is strengthening, as is America.
The Bank insists the positive signs are not yet strong enough, but with employment rising and wage increases above the rate of inflation, a 2016 interest rate rise is certainly considered possible by many economists, including Sir Charlie Bean, the former deputy governor of the Bank of England.
Mr Carney has made it clear, in a way similar to the Federal Reserve, that when a rate rise comes it will be small and any subsequent increases will be gradual.
Homeowners with mortgages will need to factor in higher payments.
Savers who have seen years of very low interest rates are likely to heave a sigh of relief as, finally, the world starts approaching economic normality.
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2012
First, some firsts:
| Betsan PowysFormer political editor, Wales
The first Act passed by the Assembly, the first visit by the Welsh government and the Assembly to the Supreme Court in London, the first woman elected to lead Plaid, the first tranche of the Silk Commission's work done and - they hope - not left on a shelf to be dusted in years to come.
Labour flew through the local elections. only to land slightly awkwardly when the very first Police Commissioners were elected.
Definitely not firsts? Floods again, more dire economic predictions, the row over child abuse in North Wales rekindled and Awema, the 19th report in a row from the Wales Audit Office criticising the way the Welsh government deals with grant management.
2012 gave rise to a new double act in Westminster - Smith and Jones. Owen and David will take up the cudgels again come 2013. In Cardiff, the rumoured first shake up of Carwyn Jones' cabinet never came. Will there be one after Christmas, he was asked last week? "There is nothing planned" he said, "though after Christmas is pretty open ended ..."
Differences borne from devolution grew in 2012 - what it is to learn, qualify, teach in Wales and England will diverge all the more in 2013. What it is to fall ill, prevent, treat and care in Wales and England looked increasingly distinctive too.
2013? Feel free to predict what it'll bring.
Until then, a very merry Christmas to you all, with a special mention and an extra glass or two for the cheery lot who've kept the comments flowing all year long.
Nadolig llawen i chi un ag oll a blwyddyn newydd dda!
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there were school children among the victims
| President of Sri Lanka issued a statement saying that he unequivocally and severely condemned the attack in Buttala. According
to the eyewitnesses, The attackers detonated a roadside bomb killing many paseengers. They say the attackers also opened fire
at fleeing victims.
In a statement issued by the presidential secretariate, the president blamed the Tamil Tigers for the atrociity. Retreating
attackers are also accused of killing five other people in a nearby village.
"I unequivocally and severely condemn the explosion carried out by the LTTE at Niyadella in Buttala today, and the subsequent
armed attack on the village of Dambeyaya at Okkampitiya, targeting innocent civilians including women and children, and reject
with contempt the renewed message of terror and violence sent by the LTTE through these acts of unmitigated brutality" says
the statement .
The eyewitnesses described their experiance to the BBC Sinhala Service.
S.S.M. Sunil was one of the passengers who got away, he said “The bus was thrown after the blast. "I did not realise what
happened at first. Then I felt that I was bleeding. I jumped out of the bus and ran. The attackers started shooting at the
people who were running away".
Shot at fleeing victims
"I was travelling in the bus. There was a huge explosion. People fell on top of me. Then they started shooting at the people
who were trying to escape. There were two dead women on top of me. I saw another girl and asked her to call the police" said
M. Upatissa who was wounded in the attack.
The conductor of the fatal bus described what he saw. "Around 7.30am, we were hit with an explosion. I was next to the front
entrance. People fell all over the bus. I jumped out and ran. I saw the driver slumped across his seat. Suddenly the Tigers
boarded the bus and started shooting the passengers. They also shot at the people who were fleeing. One of the men running
close to me also got shot. We dragged him and went in to hiding".
'I saw bodies all over the bus'
Dilrukshi Manjula was travelling in the bus with her young child. "I was in the bus. There was a huge blast. When I turned
around, I saw bodies everywhere inside the bus. I took my baby and started running. They started shooting at us. I ran with
my baby. They kept on shooting at us. We hid until the police arrived. Lot of people who escaped from the blast were shot
afterwards while they were trying to escape".
William Sudharshana was on the roadside when the blast rocked the area. "I was on the road when it happened. I thought one
of the tyres of the bus blew up. Then a person came on to the road and started shooting. I went and rang the police".
My son screamed ‘tigers!’
R. M. Wimalawathie, who lived nearby came out of her house on hearing the blast. "I heard it and told my son a tyre had burst.
My son and I came out to see what happened. I saw a lot of black smoke coming out. Then a person jumped out of the bus. Suddenly
people in black uniforms started shooting. My son screamed ‘tigers!’.
People in the area say they had reported about sightings of strangers in the area during the last few days. They said that
they had informed the police but nothing was done.
R. M. Jayasekera, the Officer in Charge of Buttala Police told the media that he despatched a unit of officers to the area
to investigate, but failed to find any suspicious activity.
The government had offered compensation for the victims and had offered to pay for all funeral arrangements.
Tamil Tigers had not responded to the allegations of carrying out the attack which had deliberately targeted civilians.
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Kylie Minogue is in perpetual motion. | By Mark SavageBBC music reporter
Ever since her first TV appearance on Aussie soap The Sullivans at the age of 10, she's evolved from actress to pop star to fashion icon, children's author, talent show judge and even a successful designer of home furnishings.
Her career is defined by an inquisitive restlessness. Even in music, the area where she's most famous, the star has balanced mega-pop hits like Better The Devil You Know and Can't Get You Out Of My Head with more experimental tracks like the sultry electro potboiler Slow or the glitchy, atmospheric Cherry Bomb.
But through it all, Kylie's strong suit has been joyous, escapist disco. It's the first music that she fell in love with, as a child in mid-1970s Melbourne, long before she harboured ideas of becoming a pop star in her own right.
"When I was eight or nine I used to have pretend Abba concerts in my bedroom with my friends," she told Smash Hits magazine in 1988. "We'd put on dresses and pretend to be Abba and we'd prance about the bedroom or the lounge singing into hairbrushes. I was always the blonde one."
After a dalliance with country music on her last album, Golden, Kylie has rekindled her love affair with the dancefloor for her 15th record - the appositely-titled Disco.
Although she started writing it last year, the record was far from finished when lockdown struck in March. Suddenly, the star had to turn her London flat into a DIY studio, surrounding herself with blankets, duvets and even clothes racks so she could record her vocals in isolation.
But for someone who's in perpetual motion, who once professed "I'm either moving around, or I'm asleep", quarantine was heavy going.
"It's hard to dig deep and stay positive," she says, "and I had a moment like that, during the first lockdown where I had to confess to someone else that I was struggling," she says.
"And actually, if I wasn't able to work on the album, I perhaps would have gone the other way."
Of course, Disco isn't a sombre reflection on the fallout of a global pandemic. Like Dua Lipa and Lady Gaga, who released disco-centric albums earlier this year, Kylie is prescribing her fans 40 minutes of joyous escapism.
"So much of this year has been about connection, or lack of connection, that to be making something whose purpose is just to reach people really gave me motivation," she says.
Speaking from her London home two days before the record's release, Kylie also talked about the "overwhelming" experience of playing Glastonbury, her abandoned career as a flautist, and which Kylie era is her favourite.
Disco is something you've referenced all through your career, going right back to Step Back In Time. What do you feel when you step on a dance floor?
Depends on which dance floor and which night. At the moment it's a kitchen disco so it requires a bit of imagination!
But I think disco is a place of expression and a place of losing yourself or finding yourself. When you shine a light on a mirror ball, the light is infinite. It colours you and it affects your being in that moment of time. And the night might not last forever, but I think the notion of disco as a place of escape and abandon is something that most of us have got somewhere within us.
You've written some philosophical lyrics this time around. What inspired the line: "We're all just trying to find ourselves in the storms that we chase"?
A lot of that song, Say Something, was a stream of consciousness - but I do believe [that lyric]. Sometimes you wonder, "Why am I doing this? Why am I putting myself through this?" Or "this might not be the safest road to take," but I think it's through adversity that we find ourselves.
What are those situations for you? When have you taken risks where you've worried about the outcome?
Oh, all the time! It might sound like a superficial way but things like not getting a proper job when I left school and having the dream of acting. I signed up for the dole but I actually never got a cheque because I got an acting job, and then leaving the number one show [TV soap opera Neighbours] to pursue music, and to try different genres within my pop world. Fashion faux pas - there's certainly been plenty of those.
They're maybe not risks with a whole lot of depth or gravitas - but they're risks all the same, that change the course of your life.
The last track on the album, Celebrate You, is all about leaning on friends for support. Was that inspired by lockdown?
That song was written a handful of days before lockdown so we knew that something was coming. You know, there was a kind of unsettling feeling in the air and we were conscious - the other writers and I - of the emotion creeping in, and wanting to take care of each other.
The lyrics are addressed to someone called Mary. Is she someone from your life?
That actually came from "mumble-singing" to find a melody. But Mary is all of us. She's anyone who needs a cuddle and some reassurance.
I always picture that song as last call at the pub. All the family are there and maybe Aunty Mary's had one too many. The truths are coming out, there's been some tears, lots of hugs. Everyone's danced, everyone's partied - and this is the wind-down, back to Earth kind of song.
It's nice to hear you talk about the writing process like this because you don't get recognised for it. Maybe that's because those early hits came from the Stock Aitken Waterman hit factory - but on this album you have a co-writing credit on every song. Is it important to you to be in the mix?
For myself, yeah. I don't need to be recognised for it - but I absolutely love the writing process. To me it's like magic: You go into a session with nothing and you come out with a song. And because I don't play instruments, I do melody and lyrics. I need to do that with other people.
Don't you play piano and flute, though? You entered competitions when you were younger...
I did! You know what? I still have my original flute from high school. It was a very handy instrument - you can just put it in your bag - but I didn't carry on with that.
Then I played piano for a number of years and I always learned by ear, so I can only read music very slowly. So as much as I can't play, I have a sense of musicality.
When you played Glastonbury last year, it became the festival's most-watched performance of all time. What went through your head as you walked onto the stage?
I suppose the overriding thought was, 'Wow'. I was blown away.
In the dressing room, there's this swarming team of people - dancers and musicians and friends and family - but the moment that you step onto the stage you're suddenly alone. I mean, you've got your band and dancers but in a sense I am no longer moored at the port. You're going out to sea and you're not quite sure what's going to happen.
But by the time I was in position on that set and it spun around.... There's a shot that became a gif or a meme and that encapsulates better than I can what was going through my mind - because I just, I shook my head, I smiled. It was wild to see that many people, and to feel that many people.
After that performance, you said you didn't want to become a tribute act to yourself and that Glastonbury was an opportunity to "wipe the slate clean". What did you mean by that?
I suppose I didn't want to feel like that was it. I felt like there was more music and more new experiences [to come].
And in a way I feel that there was a line drawn - but I didn't want the line to be above me. I wanted it to be a line acknowledging that I did it, I made it that far. I wanted to be able to use [Glastonbury] to propel me to go even further. Not to erase any of the past - that show was a celebration triumphs and a celebration of getting through the difficulties, and to have that history, that 30-plus year history with so many people is a glorious thing.
I'm thinking about that history and all of those songs and all of the looks you've had over the years. I know fans debate furiously about their favourite Kylie era... but what's yours?
Oh. Ooh. You're an awful person to ask me that!
There's so many and they all represent something different... I'm really, really trying to commit to one - but as soon as my mind thinks of one era, another one will tap me on the shoulder and say, "Wait, wait. What about this one?"
I guesssss one of the eras that really seemed to be galactic in its own way was the Fever era [Can't Get You Out Of My Head, Love At First Sight].
It was just one of those moments where the planets are aligned and everything worked - the songs, the imagery, the moment. So I don't know that I would call it my favourite because I can find something to appreciate in all of them, but I'm going to choose that one, just because it did so well.
Disco is out now.
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The wait is almost over. | The European Championship "kicks-off" on Friday night and for the first time 24 teams will compete in the month-long competition.
England, Northern Ireland and Wales are there, the Republic of Ireland too.
But spare a thought for Scotland.
Gordon Strachan's team are the only home nation who failed to qualify for the tournament in France.
So in the name of true impartiality, Newsbeat asked Glasgow-based poet Liam McCormick to give his take on the chances of his country's neighbours.
Liam is just one of the spoken word artists who's worked with BBC Radio 1Xtra during its Words First season.
Hear his performance at the finale on 1Xtra on Thursday 16 June from 7pm.
Find us on Instagram at BBCNewsbeat and follow us on Snapchat, search for bbc_newsbeat
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A salad nearly killed my brother. | By Vicky BakerBBC News
It was the mid-1990s. The incident involved a self-service counter and one bowl that contained hidden nuts.
Adam was 10 years old. I was older, but still at school. I remember the nurse coming into my classroom to say he had been taken to hospital and I should make my own way home. My dad phoned me when I got there, trying to reassure me that everyone would be home soon. But knowing he must have raced back early from work, I felt uneasy.
What I didn't know was that Adam was in a critical condition in an A&E bed. My parents had always avoided giving him nuts, because I had a severe allergy and we suspected he might too. This accidental consumption was the first proof. His body had gone into anaphylactic shock - a severe and potentially life-threatening reaction to an allergen.
Luckily, due to fast treatment, he pulled through. Afterwards, he got his first Epipen - a self-administering adrenalin injection - to give him a better first line of defence. My mum also complained to the supermarket and they changed their salad-bar policy, labelling the contents of each bowl and tethering the cartons to reduce risks of cross-contamination.
Over the years, we have both got used to having the occasional "run in" with a nut. You do all that you can to be careful. You check the menu; you quiz the waiters; you scan the small print in the supermarket; you ask questions when anyone offers you a biscuit. You essentially do a risk assessment every time you eat, and mostly without realising you're doing it.
Yet sometimes you slip up, or the restaurant does. Maybe a waiter forgets to pass your message on. Or perhaps you take a carefree bite into a Mexican taco because who puts peanuts in tacos? (Answer: an experimental London chef.)
Cases of nut allergy among children increased significantly during the 1990s, according to the UK-based support group the Anaphylaxis Campaign.
Researchers are trying to work out why this is happening, and what can be done, including experimenting with weaning and desensitisation trials.
In the meantime, those of us who belong to this unfortunate club have been adapting to survive.
And to avoid overhyping, it is worth pointing out that deaths are still rare. US researchers have said people are more likely to die in an accident or be murdered. Which is reassuring, I suppose.
The mother's take
Lucy Patterson, who works for a charity near Cardiff, has a four-year-old son who has a whole host of severe allergies.
The first sign of Jack's problem came when he was five months old and cow's milk in his porridge sent him into anaphylactic shock. Tests afterwards showed he was allergic to milk, eggs and nuts.
"When we buy food, we double and triple check the labels. Even if we bought the product before," she says. Jack also carries two Epipens at all times.
As a family, they have decided not to eat out or travel abroad while he is young, but she hopes he will be able to do both in the future. "I don't want to bring Jack up in fear. My job is to educate and protect him as much as I can, and that's easy when he's four.
"He is likely to eat out when he's older, so my job then is to ensure he asks the right questions, always carries his Epipens and that the friends he is with know the situation fully."
What it feels like
When I read the recent news that Natasha Ednan-Laperouse died after eating a Pret baguette, I knew the panic she must have gone through. That moment when you first reach for an antihistamine tablet, or an Epipen, and are unsure if your body can bring the situation back under control.
I have had chefs and waiters refuse to believe me when I say I am having an allergic reaction. "There were no nuts in that dish," they insist flatly.
But it is not debatable as far as I am concerned. When there are nuts in a dish - particularly peanuts - I know as soon as the fork touches my tongue. Within seconds, my whole mouth and throat are overwhelmed by an intensely unpleasant sensation that is hard to describe. It is not a taste, more like an anti-taste, which sucks all other flavours out of my mouth, leaving a dry burn.
Not all reactions are the same, though. Aside from the more serious effects of anaphylaxis, some people wheeze, others get stomach cramps. According to the British Medical Journal, one of the symptoms is a "sense of impending doom", which I find darkly hilarious but also true. The varying degrees of severity mean that some people are more willing to take risks than others.
I remember a waiter at a hotel-restaurant once refusing to accept there were any nuts in what he had just served me. Fearing my throat might start to close, I wasn't in a position to continue arguing, but I knew there was no doubt.
Once I had recovered, the waiter and the chef came to my room to apologise; they admitted there were peanuts in an appetiser, there had been a miscommunication. The hotel owners also visited me the next day, saying this had never happened before and they were going to do all they could to ensure it didn't happen again, starting by briefing all staff.
Obviously I would have preferred not to have been the guinea pig, but this felt like progress. I had been listened to and taken seriously - eventually.
The chef's take
US chef and television host Amanda Freitag has a serious hazelnut allergy and ran a hazelnut-free kitchen when she was at the helm of New York City's Empire Diner.
"As soon as I started to talk about my allergy, some of my other colleagues revealed they have food allergies as well," she says. "It's not something a chef always wants to discuss because we don't want to be limited in what we eat or cook. But I find it a welcome challenge to make a dish without the allergen. I like working to make the dish just as good or better."
Her advice to other chefs would be to take all allergies and food sensitivities very seriously.
"Do consistent menu training with all your staff - kitchen and front of the house - so that they are aware of all the ingredients in every dish and, if they are uncertain, to always come to the kitchen and ask to confirm," she says. "Having menu descriptions written and constantly updated for the staff to reference is essential."
What else companies can do to help
Pret A Manger - a major UK sandwich chain - has been under scrutiny for its approach to labelling after two deaths linked to its products, first Natasha and also in a dairy-allergy case.
In 2015, I accidentally ate nuts in a Pret sandwich and I emailed them to ask if they would consider labels on the products. They told me this would be "impossible" and they only sought to "provide a description of the flavours one may expect in a sandwich". Natasha died the following year.
After an inquest, they have now agreed to bring in labels.
On the other end of the scale, I remember one major supermarket going through a phase of labelling everything with "May contain nuts" - even ham and orange squash. That was not particularly helpful.
However, other companies have been praised for their approach. In the UK, many nut-allergy sufferers are fond of Welsh chocolate company Kinnerton, which prides itself on going to "extraordinary lengths" to make their produce safe. They even created two factories - one for nut produce, one for nut-free produce. If you want to set foot in the latter, you have to sign a document saying you have not eaten nuts that day or brought any with you.
Airlines - which traditionally serve peanuts as on-board snacks - have also been under pressure to adapt to the times.
It was in mid-air that my brother had his second-most serious anaphylactic shock. He now picks his flights based on their nut policy. British Airways still serves some nuts, so they are on the "no" list. Whereas EasyJet will agree to stop serving all nuts if you let them know, and this reassures him.
In August, US company Southwest Airlines stopped serving peanuts on all its flights, but signalled the move with a particularly melodramatic goodbye. "Peanuts forever will be part of Southwest's history and DNA," it wrote in a press release.
The doctor's take
"The allergy community is very bruised by recent reports of fatal food-induced reactions," says Professor George Du Toit, a specialist in paediatric allergy at the Evelina London Children's Hospital, Guy's and St Thomas' Trust.
"It is extremely distressing when you see legal cases [such as the Pret A Manger case] playing out in the media. The reports typically arise long after the event, with delayed and mixed messages associated. This is all very frightening for allergic patients and their families," he says.
He said a shortage of Epipens had compounded the fears.
"Hopefully these tragic reports will lead to an increased understanding of food allergies and improved government support for increased provision of services to diagnose and support patients. The legislation around food allergen labelling is also in need of urgent review."
In The Times, writer Dominic Lawson responded to the Pret scandal by saying people with severe allergies should never eat outside their house.
Yet seeing as we are more likely to die in a car accident, should we stay in the house because of that, too? When driving, we all take reasonable precautions, like wearing a seatbelt and observing traffic lights; we also put a certain amount of confidence in other drivers and the company that made our cars. That's what I do when I eat out.
Having a serious allergy is mostly just annoying. Believe me, I'd really rather not ask the questions or cause a fuss. I can appreciate it can be annoying for chefs and companies too. But it looks like we are all stuck with the problem, at least for now, and more co-operation and understanding could save lives.
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Everyone is talking about it. | By Georgina RannardBBC News
On Wednesday Ireland and Ulster rugby players Paddy Jackson and Stuart Olding were found not guilty of raping a woman in 2016.
The reaction on social media was swift and determined, echoing the #MeToo movement about sexual harassment which erupted in late 2017.
Many claim the criminal justice system's handling of sex offence allegations reflects the poor state of women's rights in Northern Ireland. More than 41,000 people so far have used the hashtag #IBelieveHer.
Others argue defendants are tried in a court of law, not by social media, and criticise people for trying to subvert a legal ruling.
The recent case centred on an alleged incident at Mr Jackson's home in Belfast in 2016 where Mr Jackson, Mr Olding, Blane McIlroy and Rory Harrison went with four women after leaving a club.
One of the women told the court Mr Jackson followed her into a bedroom, pushed her onto a bed, and she claims he then raped her.
The accused said all sexual activity was consensual.
All four men were acquitted on Wednesday.
Many online quickly and angrily expressed criticism of the legal system following the ruling, claiming it would discourage complainants from reporting incidents due to fear of not being believed or being put through the wringer in court.
Also widely shared is a 2017 Guardian newspaper comment piece discussing the issue of under-reporting of sexual violence, the lack of specialist support for women reporting rape, and the way that some women reporting incidents are met with disbelief from police.
A victims' support centre, the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre, called for a review into how cases of alleged sexual offences are conducted claiming all parties in the case were "subjected to questioning on the most intimate and private aspects of their lives in a way that was inefficient and cruel".
Screenshots are being shared of witness testimony by the complainant saying she was initially too scared to report the alleged incident to police because she didn't believe she would be taken seriously.
In tweets shared thousands of times, social media users including journalists, doctors and students argue the case demonstrates the unsuitability of the existing legal system for trying rape cases.
Many tweets also suggest reporting rape in Ireland is extremely difficult because of the belief that the accused are "rarely found guilty".
Actor Danielle Collins shared a screenshot of her donation of €500 (£438) to to the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre.
One widely shared Facebook post by David O'Donovan explained he accepted the legal verdict, but he felt that the case demonstrated an attitude of "misogyny" and "abuse" generally towards women.
"To women; our family, our friends, or strangers…we are listening. We will be better. We will stand up and speak out," he wrote.
But others strongly objected to the hashtag and instructed observers to respect the court's verdict.
Others commented on the negative impact allegations of rape can have on defendants who are acquitted.
"The men were very much on trial and received enormous coverage. They may have been acquitted but their reputations and public image have been badly damaged," read one tweet.
In another liked more than 5,000 times, journalist Sarah McInerney highlighted the strength of feeling in the country about the case, writing:
"The #IBelieveHer hashtag gives an insight into how deeply upsetting this court case was for so many people. If nothing else, it must surely lead to a change in how rape trials are conducted. Is there any other crime in which the alleged victims appears to be the one on trial?"
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"No one will be left without hope." | Laura KuenssbergPolitical editor@bbclaurakon Twitter
That's quite the promise from the Chancellor at a time when fears are rising of a spike in unemployment.
Jobs have already been disappearing. As expected, therefore, Rishi Sunak's priority at the despatch box was to find ways to create new jobs, and to protect others.
The new Jobs Retention Bonus, a cash payment to employers who bring staff back from the taxpayer backed furlough scheme, was the big surprise - it is a significant and potentially very expensive way of trying to get people back to work.
Bosses who bring staff back to work after they have been at home on taxpayer funded wages will get £1,000 per employee if they are still on the payroll at the end of January.
Hypothetically, it could cost up to £9bn if everyone returns to work. That seems unlikely, and it is impossible to know what the take up will be, but it is another major intervention from this Conservative chancellor.
He's prepared to spend as much as £30bn by the time you include the other measures he confirmed - cuts to stamp duty, VAT in the hospitality sectors down to 5%, a scheme to create jobs for young people that might have a price tag of £2bn. Spending on infrastructure was accelerated too and don't forget an 'eat out to help out' scheme where customers will get discounts on their social life (although not including alcohol) courtesy of the Chancellor - insert pun here.
Don't let excitement about a few cheap burgers (only Monday to Wednesday) distract you from what this is about.
The Chancellor has just outlined another hefty chunk of spending to try to prop up the economy, specifically to try to keep millions of people from joining the dole.
Many of the measures run against traditional Tory instincts. And there isn't a whiff of how any of it will be paid for for at least another couple of months.
But that's against the background of the sharpest decline in the economy in generations, with the fortunes of what will actually happen next dependent on the progress of a deadly disease.
The opposition parties already suggest that the scale of what the government is proposing falls short of what will be required.
Rishi Sunak admitted in his statement "our plan will not be the last - it is the next", knowing full well that the profound economic impact of the coronavirus crisis is far from passed.
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A chronology of key events:
| circa 2000 BC - First Micronesian navigators arrive in the Marshall Islands, naming the atolls Aelon Kein Ad - "our islands". They are skilled navigators able to make long canoe voyages among the atolls.
1521 -29 - Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan and Spaniard Miguel de Saavedra visit the islands.
1592 - Spain lays formal claim to the islands.
1788 - The Marshall Islands are given their name by British Naval Captain John William Marshall who sails through the area with convicts bound for New South Wales.
1864 - German Adolph Capelle establishes the first trading company. Several other German trading companies follow suit.
1885 - Germany annexes the Marshall Islands and pays Spain 4.5 million US dollars in compensation. Germany leaves the running of the islands to a group of powerful German trading companies.
German protectorate
1886 - Germany establishes a protectorate over the islands.
1887 - The Jaluit Company, a German corporation, is entrusted with the governance of the Marshall Islands.
1914 - Japan captures the islands and builds several large military bases there.
1920 - League of Nations grants Japan a mandate to administer the islands.
1944 - US forces capture islands from the Japanese.
Nuclear tests
1946 - US begins a nuclear weapons testing programme called Operation Crossroads on Bikini Atoll. Chief Juda of Bikini agrees to evacuate the 167 islanders to Rongerik Atoll, 125 miles east of Bikini Atoll, on the understanding that they will be able to return once the tests are over.
1947 - The Marshall Islands becomes part of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands created by the UN and administered by the US.
1948 - Islanders are forced to evacuate Enewetak Atoll as US expands nuclear weapons testing programme in the area.
1954 - Bravo, the most powerful hydrogen bomb ever tested by the US, is detonated on Bikini Atoll.
1965 - US government sets up the Congress of Micronesia in preparation for greater self-governance in Micronesia.
Health worries
1969 - US embarks on a long-term project to decontaminate Bikini Atoll.
1970s Islanders are told that it is safe to return to Bikini but are subsequently found to have dangerous levels of radiation in their bodies and are evacuated once again. Following exposure to such high levels of radiation the islanders begin to develop severe health problems.
1973 - Marshall Islands withdraw from the Congress of Micronesia seeking greater political independence.
1979 - Independence. US recognises the Constitution of the Marshall Islands and its government. Amata Kabua is elected president.
1980 - Having removed much of the topsoil on Enewetak Atoll, the islanders are permitted to return.
1982 - Officially renamed the Republic of the Marshall Islands.
Compact with the US
1983 - Marshall Island voters approve the Compact of Free Association with the US which will give them independence. The Marshall Islands will receive financial and other aid from the US, which retains responsibility for defence. The US keeps its military base on Kwajalein Atoll. Today this is a vital part of the US missile defence shield tests.
1985 - US agrees to complete the decontamination of Bikini Atoll within 15 years.
1986 21 October - US Congress ratifies a Compact of Free Association giving the Marshall Islands independence. Islanders are promised compensation for damage caused by nuclear tests in the 1940s and 50s.
1988 - US-funded Nuclear Claims Tribunal is set up to determine a final compensation package to the islanders.
1989 - UN report warns that rising sea-levels will completely submerge the Marshall Islands by 2030 because of global warming.
UN membership
1990 - UN terminates trusteeship status. Country is admitted to the UN in 1991.
1996 - Radiation levels are considered low enough to permit the return of tourism to Bikini Atoll.
1998 - Marshall Islands become one of only a handful of states to officially recognise Taiwan.
2001 - Nuclear Claims Tribunal determines damages to be paid to Bikinians. There is not enough cash to honour the award and it is left to the Bikinians to petition the US for more money. A decision is expected to take years.
2003 December - US president signs new Compact of Free Association, worth $3.5bn over 20 years, with Marshall Islands and Micronesia.
2004 January - President Kessai Note begins second four-year term.
2007 August - The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) removes the Marshall Islands from its blacklist of uncooperative tax havens.
2007 November - National election takes place amid reports of "chaotic" organisation.
2007 December - Election results show no clear winner and are challenged in court and by a number of recount petitions.
2008 January - Parliament elects former speaker Litokwa Tomeing as president by 18 votes to 15.
2008 December - Government declares state of emergency as waves flood Majuro and Ebeye urban centres, displacing hundreds of people.
2009 October - Jurelang Zedkaia is chosen as president after Litokwa Tomeing is ousted in a no-confidence vote.
2012 January - Christopher Loeak becomes president.
2013 September - Pacific island leaders meet in Marshall Islands, sign "Majuro Declaration" promising to tackle climate change.
2014 April - The Marshall Islands sues all nine of the world's nuclear-armed states for allegedly failing to pursue disarmament talks stipulated under the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
2014 March - Marshall Islands declares a state of emergency after major flooding.
Generational change
2015 November - General election sees many veteran politicians lose office, including half the cabinet. Neither President Loeak's supporters nor the opposition KEA party muster a majority.
2016 January - Parliament elects independent senator Hilda Heine first female president of the Marshall Islands, after toppling President Carsten Nemra in no-confidence vote. He held office for one week.
US drops Forum Fisheries Agency treaty with Pacific nations, leaving Marshall Islands facing serious shortfall in revenues from fees.
2016 October - International Court of Justice rejects cases brought by the Marshall Islands against Britain, India and Pakistan for their alleged failure to pursue nuclear disarmament, saying it does not have jurisdiction in the matter.
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"Everyone's moving to Germany." | By Jenny HillBBC Berlin correspondent
So says Govan, a thin, bearded French jazz musician from Lyon whom I meet in a German language class for people recently arrived in Berlin.
"In one month," he says, "I met lot of people from everywhere."
The faces around the table are young, the accents mainly European. They tell a story about how the demography of this country is changing fast.
Germany is now the world's second most popular destination - after the US - for immigrants. And they are arriving in the hundreds of thousands.
Net migration to Germany has not been this high for 20 years, and even the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) describes it as a boom. In 2012, 400,000 so-called "permanent migrants" arrived here.
They are people who have the right to stay for more than a year. That represents an increase of 38% on the year before.
They are coming from Eastern Europe, but also from the countries of the southern Eurozone, lured by Germany's stronger economy and jobs market.
And they are being welcomed with open arms - by the government at least - because Germany has a significant skills gap, and a worryingly low birth rate.
"Immigrants are on average younger and the German population is on average older, so immigrants are welcome," says Dr Ingrid Tucci, from the German Institute for Economic Research.
"It's important to attract students and highly qualified people. So the government is making it easier for them, trying to invest and put a culture of welcome in place."
Here they call it "Willkommenskultur".
In practice it means free or cheap German language lessons for immigrants plus integration and citizenship classes.
As Berlin's senator for work, integration and women, it is Dilek Kolat's job to facilitate Willkommenskultur in the city.
"Every academic, every employer will tell you we need skilled migration. There's a change in perception in wider society.
"We don't look at migrants as a possible threat or a possible problem, but we look at them as potential.
"What can they bring to society? Business[es] are approaching the senate and asking how can we get the young refugees into apprenticeships which at the moment aren't taken up by German kids."
But Willkommenskultur is also about attitude.
And - politically at least - it's changed substantially since the days of Helmut Kohl.
Under his leadership Germany was 'not a country of immigration' despite the hundreds of thousands of Turkish migrant workers who'd been invited here in the sixties.
They had been recruited to help with Germany's post-war reconstruction.
And - as their families and friends arrived to join them - Germany's immigration figures spiked for the first time since the Second World War. In 1970 for example annual net immigration stood at more than half a million.
Private papers recently published by the German news website Spiegel Online reveal Chancellor Kohl told then UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 1982 that he wanted to halve the number of Turks living in Germany. They did not, he said, "integrate well".
Today they are an established community. Stroll through the Berlin district of Neukoln and you pass hundreds of businesses run by their children and grandchildren.
In the window of one of the restaurants here, a large chunk of roasting meat turns slowly on a spit. Inside, a woman with a headscarf sips tea from a glass in front of a counter stacked with kebabs and and flatbreads ready for the lunchtime rush.
It is owned by Hassan - an earnest man in his 40s, who arrived in Germany with his parents when he was 13. But he worries about immigration today.
'It's great people come to Germany. They should be able to come. But people who don't work shouldn't be able to stay. Look at me - I work 20 hours a day.
"There are a lot of beggars. They have no money but ask for food. I give them kebabs, pizzas, but my heart breaks - I can't give food to everyone."
Neither, it seems, can some German towns and cities, who are largely responsible for the welfare of immigrants.
Last year the mayors of 16 large German cities wrote to the government asking for help with unemployed migrants flooding into their regions from Eastern Europe. Places like Cologne, Dortmund and Hanover have struggled to cope.
And there is growing support in Germany for a new political party. Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) acknowledges the need for migrant workers but still wants tighter controls on immigration.
This, though, is a country still haunted by the atrocities of World War Two.
People here are mindful of how devastating the consequences of "Rassenhass" - racial hatred - can be.
And bear in mind most of today's migrants are moving within the EU.
Since Bulgaria and Romania acceded in 2007 there's been a significant increase of immigrants from both countries - 67,000 Romanians and 29,000 Bulgarians arrived in the first half of 2013.
In response to public concern about the numbers, Angela Merkel's government pledged to crack down on migrants who fraudulently claimed benefits but - in the words of one politician from her conservative CDU party - free movement for workers is "one of the main pillars of the European Union".
So, as Dr Tucci says: "There aren't a lot of tensions - Germany doesn't compare with countries like France where tensions are more virulent.
"It's important though to say the population has to be prepared for immigration. There are perhaps fears of newcomers. So political rhetoric is important."
Back in the language class, I meet Alissa and David - an architect and a musicians' agent - who have arrived from Milan.
"We discovered that Milan was too expensive for us and the quality of life was not so good," says David.
"We had some money and we decided to buy a flat here in Berlin because it was cheaper than Italy.
"We were looking for a real metropolis, and in Europe the big cities are too expensive. Berlin was the only solution. The only problem is the language."
But, adds Alissa: "I feel at home."
She is in good company. More than 7.6 million foreigners are registered as living in Germany. It is the highest number since records began in 1967.
In the words of President Joachim Gauck: "A look at our country shows how bizarre it is that some people cling to the idea that there could be such a thing as a homogenous, closed single-coloured Germany.
"It's not easy to grasp what it is to be German - and it keeps changing."
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The problem is clear enough. | By Andrew WalkerBBC World Service Economics correspondent
France's unemployment rate is stubbornly high, just below 11%, and economic growth is persistently weak.
The French economy is still slightly smaller than it was at the beginning of 2008, just before the downturn set off by the global financial crisis.
Six years on, while some economies including the US, UK and Germany, have managed some relatively strong growth, France is still looking weak.
The most recent data, for the third quarter of last year, show the French economy shrinking again.
What does France need to do to inject some economic vigour into its veins?
More cuts
Critics of French economic policy call for a smaller state, and a reduction in the burden faced by business from tax and regulation, especially in the labour market. It could also do with getting the government's debts down.
President Francois Hollande certainly touched all these bases during a speech on Tuesday in which he promised to revitalise the economy.
He promised another 50bn-euros (£41.5bn; $68bn) of spending cuts, equivalent to 4% of the total. Now, public spending is equivalent to 56% of national income, the second biggest share in the eurozone.
Cuts of that scale could make a difference, but the French public sector would still be large.
Economic growth could perhaps do more to reduce the share of the state in the economy.
One of his central proposals to stimulate growth was a cut of 30bn euros in social security costs for business. He also promised to simplify the procedures that businesses have to deal with - throughout their lifecycle, from formation to liquidation.
On government finances, France has already taken steps to bring down its borrowing needs.
The International Monetary Fund says that most of the effort has been in the form of higher taxes, and it argues that so far as further adjustment is needed, it should be in the form of spending cuts.
What all this means in practice will obviously depend on the detail. There wasn't much of that in his remarks on Tuesday.
It will also depend on how effectively it's all implemented, which will in turn raise some political challenges.
German parallels
It does all look like a rather surprising agenda for a left-of-centre political leader to pursue - in essence a strategy of more markets and less government. But then, something similar has happened in a number of European countries.
The most obvious comparison is across France's eastern border in Germany.
Gerhard Schroeder, a Social Democrat, was Chancellor around the turn of the century, a time when the country was seen by some as the "sick man of Europe ".
He set off reforms to the jobs market that many commentators credit with reviving the German economy.
The comparison is not exact. Germany's public sector was a much smaller share of the GDP, than the French equivalent today. But there are some striking parallels nonetheless.
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President: Ollanta Humala
| Ollanta Humala, a career army officer, won the June 2011 presidential election after promising to respect democracy and spread the benefits of a decade-long economic boom to the poor.
He narrowly beat Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of jailed former President Alberto Fujimori.
As Mr Humala emerged as victor in the polls, financial markets plunged on fears that he would ruin the economy.
In 2015, he faced the toughest challenge of his presidency when the opposition-dominated Congress passed a vote of no-confidence in Ana Jara - the sixth prime minister to serve under Mr Humala.
Ms Jara was censured over allegations that Peru's intelligence agency had for years gathered information on leading figures in business and politics.
The setback came as opinion polls put public support for Mr Humala at 25%, and followed a series of corruption scandals in his cabinet.
Mr Humala, 48 at the time of his election, burst onto the political scene in 2000 when he led a short-lived bloodless revolt to demand that former President Fujimori resign after 10 years in power. In the 1990s, he fought in the jungle against Shining Path guerrillas.
Uprising
He comes from a family of prominent radicals. His brother, Antauro Humala, led a failed uprising in 2005 against former President Alejandro Toledo's government and was jailed for the violent protest that killed four police officers.
His father, Isaac Humala, is a central figure in an ethnic movement that seeks to reclaim Peru's Incan glory by spurning foreign interests.
In 2006, Humala narrowly lost the presidential election to Alan Garcia. He campaigned in a red polo shirt and called for a dramatic transformation in the style of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's declared "socialist revolution".
Since then he has recast himself as a family man. He has softened his radical image and disavowed his affinity for Mr Chavez.
He promises Peru's poor a greater share of the country's considerable mineral wealth and pledged to honour the free market but put Peruvians first.
Prime Minister (resigned): Ana Jara
Peru is unusual among South American countries in having the post of prime minister.
Employment Minister Ana Jara was appointed as the sixth Peruvian prime minister in less than three years, following the resignation of Rene Cornejo in July 2014.
Mr Cornejo had stepped down following allegations that one of his advisors offered money to discredit a political opponent.
Less than a year later, Ms Jara herself stepped down after losing a vote of confidence in Congress.
The legislature voted to censure him over allegations that Peru's intelligence agency had for years gathered information on leading figures in business and politics.
Ms Jara trained as a lawyer and served as minister of women and social development from 2011 to 2014.
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"Oh please, darling, fly!" | By Pavel AksenovBBC Russian, Vostochny
A technician standing behind me was really nervous during the launch countdown at Vostochny, a new space centre in Russia's Far East.
It was the second launch attempt - a day after the previous one had been aborted at the last minute.
I noticed that some of the technician's colleagues also had pale faces and had crossed their fingers.
It emerged later that a cable malfunction had led to the postponement of Wednesday's launch.
This time there was relief for Russia's federal space agency, Roscosmos, as the Soyuz rocket, carrying three satellites, blasted off and the booster stage separated.
President Vladimir Putin had travelled 5,500km (3,500 miles) to watch the launch and was in a black mood after Wednesday's cancellation, berating Vostochny's managers for the financial scandals that have blighted this prestige project.
As the rocket soared away from Earth the tension evaporated - the crowd around me was laughing, hugging, drinking champagne.
Only the essential launchpad structures have been finished at Vostochny, which is still a big building site. The original plan was to have it all ready by December 2015.
When we inspected the launchpad later it appeared to be in good shape. A huge metal covering for the service cabin had plunged onto a concrete chute for the rocket exhaust gases. But a specialist insisted that the damage was not serious.
Hours earlier President Putin had warned of consequences for the management failures at Vostochny.
"If their guilt is proven, they will have to change their warm beds at home for plank-beds in prison," Mr Putin said, commenting on the arrest of four senior people involved in the project.
Only hours after Vostochny's first launch one of those managers received a three-year jail sentence for massive embezzlement.
Strategic move
Vostochny is a pet project for Mr Putin. Russia's ambition is to develop it as the main civilian space centre, eventually replacing Baikonur, the Soviet-era cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
Baikonur has potential political risks, being outside Russia.
So Vostochny has political and propaganda significance: it must prove that, despite international sanctions and a struggling economy, Russia can still complete a new cosmodrome and run it efficiently.
The next day I asked Roscosmos head Igor Komarov how he had felt before the second, successful, launch attempt.
"How do you think I felt?" he answered, grim-faced.
The authorities were so nervous that they banned all live broadcasting before the launch and for the 10 minutes after lift-off.
But Roscosmos officials have spoken optimistically about Vostochny becoming a centre for international space co-operation in future.
The Plesetsk cosmodrome, in Russia's Arctic north, will remain the centre for military space launches.
Away from the launchpad, much of the infrastructure at Vostochny remains unfinished. The engineers are in no hurry now; the next launch will not take place until next year.
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The song: | By Liam AllenEntertainment reporter, BBC News
In the absence of an FA-approved World Cup song this year - after coach Fabio Capello said he wanted to be "fully focused on the football" - we take a look back at official England songs from previous competitions.
MEXICO 1970 - BACK HOME, ENGLAND WORLD CUP SQUAD
The big brass section and raucous, reverb-drenched footballers' choir set the precedent for official England World Cup songs to follow.
Lyrically, Alan Ball, Bobby Moore, Jack Charlton and co rejected the sunnier climes of Mexico and hankered for their fans "back home". The memory of their World Cup win at Wembley four years earlier was no doubt fresh in their minds.
It goes:
"Back home, they'll be thinking about us, when we are far away. Back home, they'll be really behind us, in every game we play."
Performance:
The song reached number one. England reached the quarter finals. Alf Ramsey's men were beaten 3-2 by West Germany after extra time. England had been 2-0 up.
SPAIN 1982 - THIS TIME, ENGLAND WORLD CUP SQUAD
The song:
Thanks to their failure to qualify in 1974 and 1978, the England World Cup Squad were absent from the charts for 12 years.
Fortunately, the 1982 team - led by Kevin Keegan in both the singing and the haircut department - had a killer chorus to work with for their comeback record. It is still adored by most English boys born in the 1970s.
It goes:
"This time, more than any other time, this time. We're going to find a way, find a way to get away. This time, getting it all together."
Performance
The song reached number two. England reached the second group phase. Ron Greenwood's men were knocked out after goalless draws against Germany and then Spain. Keegan missed an easy header late on against Spain.
MEXICO 1986 - WHOLE WORLD AT OUR FEET, ENGLAND WORLD CUP SQUAD
The song:
The squad failed to move on with an old-fashioned identikit outing - complete with brass section and naff vocal line pitched too high for most of the players.
Bryan Robson, Gary Lineker and co were rightly punished when the record failed to reach the top 40.
It goes:
"We've got the whole world at our feet, there ain't a single team that we can't beat. They'll all be dancing in the street, 'cos we've got the whole world at our feet."
Performance:
The song reached a pitiful number 66. England reached the quarter-finals. Bobby Robson's men lost 2-1 to Argentina. Maradona scored one of the greatest World Cup goals of all times. He put the other one in with his hand.
ITALY 1990 - WORLD IN MOTION, ENGLANDNEWORDER
The song:
The old formula was given the red card as Manchester legends New Order - with the help of Lily Allen's dad Keith - produced the first and only cool England World Cup song.
Housey pianos, electric beats, a catchy chorus and (wisely) minimal input from the England ensemble set the scene for John Barnes - who somehow managed to pull off a rap about football.
It goes:
"We're playing for England (En-ger-land), we're playing the song. We're singing for England (En-ger-land), arrivederci its one on one."
The rap goes:
"You've got to hold and give, but do it at the right time, you can be slow or fast, but you must get to the line."
Performance:
The song became England's second number one single. The team reached the semi-finals. Bobby Robson's men lost 4-3 on penalties to West Germany after misses by Stuart Pearce and Chris Waddle. Gazza cried.
FRANCE 1998 - (HOW DOES IT FEEL TO BE) ON TOP OF THE WORLD, ENGLAND UNITED
The song:
The first England single without any input from the players.
This collaboration between, among others, the Spice Girls, Lightning Seeds and Echo and the Bunnymen, had a pleasant enough chorus.
But it was always going to suffer in comparison to its exquisite predecessor, World In Motion.
It goes:
"How does it feel, to be on top of the world, now it's for real, you're on top of the world. We're on the top of the world."
Performance:
The song reached number nine. England reached the second round. Glenn Hoddle's squad lost 4-3 on penalties to old foes Argentina. David Beckham got sent off. Michael Owen scored a wonder goal.
SOUTH KOREA/JAPAN 2002 - WE'RE ON THE BALL, ANT AND DEC
The song:
A fresh-faced Ant and Dec cemented their place in the hearts of the English people with an easy-to-remember ode to the current crop of players.
Awful. Just awful.
It goes:
"Gerrard to Beckham, Beckham to Heskey, Heskey to Owen, its a goal. We're on the ball, we're on the ball, we're on the ball, we're on the ball."
Performance:
The song reached number three. England reached the quarter-finals. Sven-Goran Eriksson's team were beaten 2-1 by a 10-man Brazil. Keeper David Seaman got lobbed.
GERMANY 2006 - WORLD AT YOUR FEET, EMBRACE
Embrace's Danny McNamara said he only decided to accept the FA's offer to record a song for England after running the idea past his father.
No doubt Mr McNamara approved of the final offering - a sentimental slice of dad rock that, like England United's 1998 effort, was nice enough.
It goes:
"With the world at your feet, there's no one you can't beat, yes it can be done. With the world at your feet, there's no height you can't reach, this could be the one."
Performance:
The song reached number three. England reached the quarter-finals. Sven-Goran Eriksson's men lost 3-1 on penalties to Portugal. Wayne Rooney was sent off for stamping.
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"What happens if you get pregnant?" | By Zoe KleinmanTechnology reporter, BBC News
That was the first question an investor asked Martha Lane-Fox after she and her business partner pitched him their idea for a dot-com company in a plush office in central London in the late 1990s.
That idea was lastminute.com, a company that would go on to be valued at £768m ($1.1bn) when it floated on the London Stock Exchange just two years later - but the investor was too preoccupied with her biological clock to seize the opportunity.
"Couldn't he see beyond his prejudices about a 25-year-old woman to glimpse the inspiring, brave new world ahead?" Baroness Lane-Fox of Soho asked the audience during the BBC Richard Dimbleby Lecture at the Science Museum in London this evening.
Sexism on trial
In California, Silicon Valley has been gripped by a sexual discrimination case brought by Reddit boss Ellen Pao against her former employer, venture capitalist Kleiner Perkins.
Two separate class-action lawsuits have also been filed against Facebook and Twitter, alleging lack of promotion on the ground of gender.
All companies have denied the claims and on Friday a jury ruled in favour of Kleiner Perkins.
So it was topical for Lady Lane-Fox to use her lecture to call for a new national body in the UK to promote a more diverse and inclusive approach to technology for users and, crucially, its workforce.
"It's time to balance the world of dot-com," she said.
"I would call it Dot Everyone."
Mind the gap
Because while it may be 17 years since the peer's excruciating first pitch, there is no getting away from the fact that the tech sector is still overwhelmingly male-dominated.
While just 14% of the UK industry is female, fewer than 10% of its investors are women, Lady Lane-Fox said.
"Yes, there are some impressive senior women in tech, women like Sheryl Sandberg at Facebook, Marissa Mayer running Yahoo - but you can count them on one hand and they're mostly based in the US," she said.
"I reckon it is not misleading to suggest that about 98% of the code that the internet and web technologies rely on was and continues to be programmed by men."
And this is apparent in the product, she believes, suggesting that Apple would not have omitted women's menstrual cycles, relied upon by millions of couples trying to conceive, from its much feted health tracker at its launch last month had women been involved in its design.
White and male
Both Apple and its arch-rival Google revealed last year that 70% of their global workforces were male.
But just 17% of Google's tech staff (20% of Apple's), and 21% of its leadership team (28% of Apple's), were women.
"Google is not where we want to be when it comes to diversity," admitted the company's Laszlo Bock in a blog post.
Amazon, Twitter, Yahoo and Facebook have also published data that indicates they are also predominately white and male.
Despite numerous high-profile campaigns to attract young women into engineering and technology, a recent survey by the Institution of Engineering and Technology found that 93% of parents in England who responded said they would not be keen for their daughters to pursue careers in these areas.
One of the huge recruitment problems facing the industry is that it does not have a reputation for being particularly female-friendly.
Where are your children?
As a female technology reporter I know that I am usually in the minority at press events.
It does not bother me - and working for the BBC gives me an edge of authority - but it is not uncommon to be met with thinly veiled surprise that I actually know what I'm talking about.
I am often asked who is looking after my children if I am away at a conference.
My male colleagues are not.
At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January I soon ran out of conversation with the notorious "booth babes" - very beautiful, semi-clad women employed as brand ambassadors by some tech firms. It was clear that I was not their target audience and, besides, they did not know a great deal about the tech spec of their product.
That said, there were fewer of them at the event than there have been in previous years.
A member of the community website Reddit who said they were a woman who "works on computers" recounted a recent phone interview in which the male interviewer advised her that no "accommodations" could be made for her.
"I'm thinking I filled out the portion where they ask if you have any disabilities incorrectly or something, so I reply, 'Well, I don't have any disabilities, so that's not a problem'," she wrote.
"'No, it's not that. It's just that everyone else in the division are men,' " was the response.
The poster says that she is still looking for work.
Case of credibility
Reddit boss Ellen Pao thrust sexism in Silicon Valley into the spotlight when she claimed in her high-profile court case that she was sexually discriminated against during her time as an employee at venture capitalist Kleiner Perkins.
She was repeatedly overlooked for promotion on account of her gender and then fired after she complained, she said.
Kleiner Perkins said its decisions were based on her performance.
Ms Pao lost her case - but that does not excuse the industry from all allegations of sexism.
"The environment definitely is biased against women in technology, and venture capital is even worse," said Erin Malone, an alternate juror who heard all the evidence in the case but was not involved in the verdict.
"But I didn't find her as credible as she should have been."
"While today's outcome is a disappointment, I take consolation in knowing that people really listened," Ellen Pao tweeted after the jury's verdict.
"Hopefully my case will inspire the venture capital industry to level the playing field for everyone, including women and minorities."
The industry will now have to wait and see whether the publicity about Ms Pao's case leads to an increase in discrimination claims, or whether the verdict acts as a deterrent.
'Groundswell'
Computer scientist Sue Black, who has founded networks for women in computer science, said that she was pleased to see women taking legal action in the face of unfair treatment in the technology sector.
"We hear more and more women's voices about what's been happening to them - and we have more men agreeing it's a problem," she said.
"I have felt in the last two or three years that there is a groundswell around this issue.
"Women are speaking out more publicly, more confidently, and there are more networks of people backing them up."
Of course, diversity is an issue that reaches far beyond gender.
In an authored piece for the Washington Post, openly gay Apple chief executive Tim Cook attacked US legislation that could condone homophobic discrimination on religious grounds.
"Discrimination isn't something that's easy to oppose," he wrote.
"It doesn't always stare you in the face. It moves in the shadows.
"And sometimes it shrouds itself within the very laws meant to protect us."
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Events, dear boy, events... | Mark D'ArcyParliamentary correspondent
Next week's Westminster agenda may look pretty tame, but pandemic developments and brinkmanship in the Brexit talks can be expected to trigger statements and urgent questions in the Commons.
And fuelled by the mayhem within Downing Street's inner circle, expect plenty of probing to discover what all the infighting portends for the key policy choices confronting the PM.
If the Vote Leave crowd are really on the way out, what does that mean for a possible deal with the EU?
Will the PM change course on dealing with the pandemic? And will it foreshadow a kinder, gentler approach to parliament and parliamentarians?
Meanwhile the main scheduled Westminster event to watch out for is the continuing evisceration of the UK Internal Market Bill in the Lords - possibly setting up a full-scale clash with the government, as ministers mobilise their Commons majority to undo the changes made in the Lords.
Unless a deal with the EU gets everyone off the hook, the result could be a rare outing for the Parliament Act - the cumbersome mechanism which allows the Commons to override the Lords.... not used, since Tony Blair tanked through his hunting legislation nearly 20 years ago.
Here are some points to watch out for next week:
And here's my rundown of the week ahead:
Monday 16 November
MPs open (14:30) with an hour of Housing, Communities and Local Government Questions.
After that, expect the usual crop of post-weekend ministerial statements and urgent questions; Brexit update, anyone?
The main legislative action is the Report and Third Reading consideration of the Pension Schemes Bill - which would provide for a framework for a new form of pension scheme known as a Collective Money Purchase Scheme.
Labour have amendments down to require the government to bring forward proposals to regulate pension super-funds, to require people to be offered advice on their pension five years before it becomes due, and to require UK pension schemes to be carbon-neutral by 2050, aligning with the Paris agreement goals of achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 or sooner.
In Westminster Hall (16:30) the Petitions Committee has scheduled two debates.
Firstly on e-petition 307339, which states "As the coronavirus escalates, there are concerns that a trade deal between the UK Government and the US might not exempt our NHS, leaving it vulnerable to privatisation and in direct contradiction to promises this would not happen."
Then, at 18:00, the committee turns to a series of e-petitions on university tuition fees - calling for repayment or reduction in fees, because of the impact of lecturers' strikes and the pandemic.
On the Committee Corridor, Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (16:30) will hear from Defra Minister Rebecca Pow and Transport Minister Rachel Maclean about progress on reducing air pollution, the Clean Air Strategy and Clean Air Zones.
The committee will also scrutinise health inequalities linked to poor air quality, public transport, active travel, and the challenges of promoting economic recovery while protecting air pollution and supporting business innovation.
In the Lords (13.00), questions cover the impact on the spread of Covid-19 on students returning to their universities, the process for child victims of trafficking seeking leave to remain in the UK, plans to remove visa requirements for visitors to the UK from Peru and incorporating the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child into UK law.
Peers will then yomp through a series of EU Exit regulations: the first three (to be debated together) are on Road vehicles and non-road mobile machinery; on Road vehicle carbon dioxide emission performance standards for cars and vans; and on new heavy-duty vehicles.
These are followed by statutory instruments on European qualifications for health and social care professions and on reciprocal and cross-border health care.
Tuesday 17 November
The Commons day begins, (11:30), with Health and Social Care Questions.
Tuesday's Ten Minute Rule Bill, from Conservative former International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell, would require the government to produce a report on whether the UK should finance the training of two doctors or nurses for every one recruited to work in this country from developing countries - essentially to create a mechanism to prevent poorer countries being stripped of expensively trained medical professionals.
The main event will be the Second Reading of the National Security and Investment Bill.
The UK is almost unique amongst major Western economies in not already having stand-alone foreign investment legislation - and this Bill would give the government power to scrutinise and intervene in takeovers of strategically important companies.
It would also give ministers a power to "call in" transactions for review; and the government's Impact Assessment estimates that it would result in 1,000 to 1,830 transactions being notified per year.
In Westminster Hall, (09:30), the SNP's Gavin Newlands leads a debate on the Covid-19 outbreak and employment rights - and keep an eye on the debate on government policy on Iran (14:30) which looks like a show of strength by Conservative MPs concerned that ministers are too soft.
It's a busy day on the Committee Corridor: Health and Social Care (09:30) focus on workforce burnout and resilience in the NHS and social care, with the BMA's Dr Chaand Nagpaul plus witnesses from the Royal College of Psychiatrists, the mental health charity Mind, and others.
Education, (10:00), takes evidence from head teachers and school governors on left-behind white pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs continue their suddenly rather topical look at the core of Whitehall, with a session on the work of the Cabinet Office (09:30) with former Cabinet Secretary Lord Sedwill,
Defence (14:00) looks at Defence industrial policy with the Minister for Defence Procurement, Jeremy Quin.
International Development (14:00) quizzes Minister of State for the Middle East and North Africa, James Cleverly, on the government's action to prevent sexual exploitation and abuse in the aid sector.
In the Lords (12:00) proceedings open with the introduction of the former Joint-General Secretary of Unite, Lord (Tony) Woodley.
Questions to ministers range across a report by the Children's Commissioner which called for the government to change the law to stop councils placing under-18s in care in unregulated accommodation; reform of the law on marriage and religious weddings and publication of the outcome of the Williams Rail Review
Then, it's legislating time: First, the Report Stage and Third Reading of the Social Security Bill , which would allow the Government to uprate the basic state pension and other benefits in the 2021/22 tax year, even if earnings do not increase.
There are no amendments expected so it will be brief. Next it's the Report Stage of the Fire Safety Bill, the post-Grenfell measure which aims to clarify who is responsible for the safety of the structure and external walls, including cladding, in multi-occupied, residential buildings.
There are amendments on Fire Safety Orders, short-term lettings premises, electrical appliance registers and public registers of fire safety assessments.
The Lords special select committee looking at life after Covid-19, (10:30), will quiz a series of experts on the way life and work has moved online during the pandemic and the implications for the way we will be living in two to five years' time.
Wednesday 18 November
MPs start their day, (11:30), with half an hour of Wales questions, before moving on to Prime Minister's Question Time.
The day's Ten Minute Rule Bill, from Labour MP Steve McCabe, aims to tighten permitted development planning regulations, which normally allow homeowners to add a conservatory, a granny flat or an extra bedroom, so they cannot be used by developers to destroy existing family homes and create unregulated hostels for profit.
The main business is another of the Commons regular debates on the pandemic - and there may be consideration of Lords amendments to any number of bills.
It may not occasion actual debate in the Chamber, but watch out for some action around the appointment of lay members to the MPs' disciplinary body, the Standards Committee. As discussed above, almost unnoticed this week, ministers blocked the appointment of one of the lay members recommended to join the committee.
Committee action includes Northern Ireland Affairs (09:30) quizzing Naomi Long, the Minister of Justice in the Northern Ireland Executive, on cross-border co-operation on policing, security and criminal justice after Brexit.
Home Affairs (10:00) continues its inquiry into Channel crossings, migration and asylum-seeking routes through the EU while Transport (09:30) speaks to industry figures about emergency Covid measures for the railways.
The Treasury Committee (14:30) takes evidence from experts, think tanks and pressure groups on Tax after coronavirus, while Human Rights (15:00) quizzes Secretary of State for Justice, Robert Buckland.
In the Lords (12:00), ministers face questions on the treatment of migrants and asylum seekers at the border of Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina; plans for campaigns on behaviour change before the COP 26 climate change conference and the appointment of a Cabinet-level minister to coordinate government policy on families
Then, fresh from having struck out its controversial "limited and specific" law-breaking clause at Committee Stage, peers being Report Stage consideration of the United Kingdom Internal Market Bill - where ministers will face a deluge of amendments on the proposed powers to police and maintain the UK's internal market.
Committee Stage debates revealed some serious concerns about the Bill's impact on the devolution settlement, which the Business Minister Lord Callanan seems to be attempting to counter with amendments of his own, to require consultation with the devolved governments. If the critics are not mollified, there may not be much left of this Bill, by the time the proposed three days of Report consideration are over.
Thursday 19 November
The Commons opens (09:30) with International Trade Questions, followed by the weekly House Business Statement from the Leader of the Commons, Jacob Rees-Mogg
The main debate - chosen by the Backbench Business Committee - is on International Men's Day.
In Westminster Hall, (13:30), there's a debate on fuel poverty and energy price caps.
On the Committee Corridor, Public Accounts (10:00) picks through the 2018-9 Whole of Government Accounts with Treasury Permanent Secretary, Sir Tom Scholar.
This is the government's balance sheet covering all spending, borrowing and liabilities across 5,000 public bodies, from schools, HS2 and Network Rail, to the Bank of England.
It shows future risks and liabilities including the hole in the defence budget, medical liabilities and unfunded pensions. It's increasingly seen as a vital tool for managing government.
In the Lords, (12:00), ministers will be questioned on returning to face-to-face appointments on demand for medical patients, financial support for research into treatments for brain tumours and encouraging fossil fuel intensive businesses to accelerate their move to net zero carbon emissions
Next, there's ping-pong with the Commons over the Private International Law (Implementation of Agreements) Bill, a measure that was heavily amended by peers, only for their amendments to be undone in the Commons.
The central issue is the use of "Henry VIII powers" which would allow new offences to be created by secondary legislation. This is followed by two EU Exit statutory instrument approval motions: on law enforcement and security in Northern Ireland and on customs, safety and security registration and identification.
Friday 20 November
Neither house will sit.
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A chronology of key events:
| 1798 - British navigator Captain John Fearn, sailing past Nauru from New Zealand to the China Seas, names it Pleasant Island.
1888 - Nauru annexed by Germany as part of the Marshall Islands Protectorate.
1900 - British company discovers phosphate on the island.
1906 - Phosphate mining begins. Britain divides profits with German firm.
1914 - Nauru seized by Australian troops.
1919 - League of Nations grants joint mandate to Australia, Great Britain and New Zealand.
1942-45 - Nauru occupied by the Japanese. Some 1,200 Nauruans - two-thirds of the population - deported to Micronesia to work as forced labourers. Five hundred die from starvation or bombing.
1947 - Nauru made UN trust territory under Australian administration.
Independence
1966 - Nauru Legislative Council elected.
1967 - Nauruans gain control of phosphate mining.
1968 - Independence. First president is Hammer DeRoburt.
1969 - Nauru becomes associate member of Commonwealth.
1989 - UN report on greenhouse effect warns Nauru might disappear beneath the sea in the 21st Century.
New challenges
1989 - Nauru sues Australia in the International Court of Justice for additional phosphate royalties dating back to trusteeship period, and compensation for mining damage.
1993 - Australia agrees to pay out-of-court settlement of $73m over 20 years. New Zealand and the UK agree to pay a one-time settlement of $8.2m each.
1999 - Nauru joins the United Nations.
2001 August - Australia pays Nauru to hold asylum seekers picked up trying to enter Australia illegally.
2002 June - Nauru holds some 1,000 asylum seekers on Australia's behalf. President Rene Harris says Canberra's promise that they would be gone by May has been broken.
Leadership changes
2003 January - Bernard Dowiyogo becomes president after a tussle for power with Rene Harris. Dowiyogo describes Nauru's situation as "critical".
2003 March - Dowiyogo agrees to US demands to wind-up Nauru's offshore banking industry amid money-laundering allegations. Shortly after this, Dowiyogo dies after heart surgery in the US.
2003 May - Ludwig Scotty elected as president but ousted in vote of no-confidence.
2003 August - Rene Harris re-elected as president.
2003 December - Some asylum seekers at Australia's offshore detention centre on Nauru stage a hunger strike.
Financial crisis
2004 April onwards - Country defaults on loan payments, its assets are placed in receivership in Australia.
2004 June - President Rene Harris loses vote of no confidence and resigns. Ludwig Scotty is elected president.
2004 July - Australia sends officials to take charge of Nauru's state finances.
2004 September - President Scotty sacks parliament after it fails to pass reform budget by deadline.
2004 October - General elections: Ludwig Scotty re-elected unopposed.
2005 May - Nauru agrees to restore diplomatic ties with Taiwan after a break of nearly three years. The move angers China, which accuses Nauru of being interested only in "material gains".
2005 October - Financial Action Task Force, set up to fight money laundering, removes Nauru from its list of uncooperative countries.
2005 December - Air Nauru's only aircraft is repossessed by a US bank after the country fails to make debt repayments.
2006 September - Australia sends Burmese asylum seekers to Nauru.
2007 March - Australia sends Sri Lankan asylum seekers to Nauru.
2007 December - President Scotty ousted in a no-confidence vote. Marcus Stephen chosen as replacement.
2008 February - Australia ends its policy of sending asylum seekers into detention on small Pacific islands, with the last refugees leaving Nauru.
2008 April - Government of President Stephen returned to office in snap elections, ending months of parliamentary deadlock over the budget.
2008 November - Finance Minister Kieran Keke announces plans to set up private bank to fill gap left by collapse of state Bank of Nauru in 1998. Australian banks have declined an invitation to provide banking services to the country.
Political deadlock
2010 March - Voters reject raft of constitutional changes aimed at stabilising government and strengthen human rights in referendum.
2010 April - Early parliamentary elections fail to produce outright winner. Mr Stephen's administration continues in caretaker role while negotiations continue.
2010 June - Parliamentary elections again fail to produce a clear winner.
2010 November - Parliament re-elects President Stephen for second three-year term under a coalition deal aimed at ending an eight-month political impasse.
2011 November - President Stephen resigns amid corruption allegations. MPs elect Freddy Pitcher to succeed him.
A week later, Mr Pitcher is ousted by a no-confidence vote, and Sprent Dabwido is elected president.
2012 June - President Dabwido sacks his cabinet, citing a legislative impasse.
2012 September - Australia opens a new detention camp for asylum-seekers on Nauru under its new offshore immigration policy.
2012 November - Rights group Amnesty describes Australia's camp for asylum-seekers on Nauru as appalling.
2012 November - Commonwealth Secretariat promises to help Nauru with funding to tackle climate change and rising sea levels.
2013 July - Police and security guards restore order after a full-scale riot breaks out at an Australian-run immigration detention camp on the island.
2015 January - Australian and Cambodian officials visit Nauru after signing a controversial refugees resettlement deal.
2016 August - The Guardian newspaper in London says leaked incident reports paint a picture of routine cruelty towards young asylum seekers on Nauru.
2016 October - The Nauru government labels the Australian Broadcasting Corporation "an embarrassment to journalism" following a damning report on the island's regional processing system.
2016 August - A senior UN official who visits Nauru describes Australia's treatment of asylum seekers in offshore detention centres as inhuman and degrading.
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March is a fickle month. | By Cecilia DalyBBC News NI Weather Presenter
According to weather lore, March is said to come in like a lion and out like a lamb, meaning the month usually starts with cold, unsettled weather, but ends mild and rather pleasant.
St Patrick's Day falls slap bang in the middle and looking back at the past decade the weather across Northern Ireland has varied considerably.
If you had taken part in a St Patrick's Day parade over the past 10 years, it would have been possible to get frostbite on the coldest in 2018, or sunburn on a warm and sunny 17 March 2010 - particularly if you're a redhead.
Going back even further, the warmest ever St Patrick's Day was in 2005, when Murlough in County Down saw a temperature of 18.5C.
In 1985 there was snow on the ground in counties Antrim and Tyrone but at the same time Belfast had more than 11 hours of sunshine, hence the possibility of sunburn.
No need for sunscreen
The sun can be as strong in mid-March as at the end of September and the skin will have little if any built-up protection in Spring compared with early Autumn.
Of course we are a hardy lot and the first bank holiday after the Christmas break is always welcome no matter what the weather.
This year it looks as though we might get lucky and find a brief spell of drier weather on Sunday after a cold, wet Saturday.
It certainly won't be challenging the heat of 2005, with a cold northwest wind and a few wintry showers in the mix.
Redheads needn't worry about the sunscreen this year.
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So you weren't invited. | Don't despair. Royal weddings are a global phenomenon. And hundreds of millions of people are expected to witness Prince Harry marry Meghan Markle in St George's Chapel at Windsor Castle, whether on television or online, or by listening to proceedings on the radio.
The streets of Windsor, Berkshire, will also be lined with thousands of well-wishers hoping to catch a glimpse of the happy couple in person.
So whether you're watching from your sofa, a community street party or a far-flung location, here's how to ensure the perfect view.
Television, radio and online
All the main UK broadcasters are devoting much of Saturday to the occasion.
While the ceremony doesn't begin until 12:00 BST, there will be several hours of commentary beforehand - and that's even before the guests start to arrive.
Special programmes begin on BBC One and the BBC News Channel and on Sky (on Sky News and Sky One), starting at 09:00 BST. The full coverage on ITV kicks off at 09:25.
The coverage will be streamed live on the BBC News website or on BBC iPlayer.
It is worth noting that cameras inside the chapel will provide the same pictures to all the networks, so once the ceremony starts, the footage will be identical across the channels, although they will keep their separate commentaries.
The BBC has waived the TV licence fee, meaning street parties and other special events can screen the wedding live without buying a licence.
The wedding will also be covered on the BBC News Facebook page, Twitter and Instagram accounts throughout the day.
On radio, Claire Balding will host live commentary from Windsor Castle on BBC Radio 4 from 11:30 BST and Radio 5 live from 10:00 BST.
Outside the UK, BBC America, BBC Canada and BBC World News will be broadcasting coverage.
Or you can tune in on BBC World Service radio.
Where to watch in Windsor?
In Windsor, viewing areas will be created along the procession route. There will be live entertainment in the town centre, which will be decorated with bunting and banners.
Big screens showing live footage of the wedding will be shown on the Long Walk and in Alexandra Gardens in Windsor.
At 13:00 BST, the newlyweds will travel through the town in the Ascot Landau carriage, which is used in official and ceremonial state events.
The carriage will leave Castle Hill, travel through Windsor and then proceed up the Long Walk, all the way back to St George's Hall by Windsor Castle.
Rail bosses advise that trains will be "extremely busy".
Queuing systems will be introduced at several stations - most likely London Waterloo, Slough, Staines and the two stations in Windsor - to avoid overcrowding on platforms.
Services between Windsor and Slough will run every 20 minutes, with trains increased from two carriages to four - the maximum that can operate on the local line.
South Western Railway will double its direct Windsor services from London Waterloo to four per hour and use 10-carriage trains.
Make sure you get there early, though - Thames Valley Police may order trains not to stop at Windsor if visitor numbers become a safety issue, and the wedding route could be closed off to latecomers.
Passengers are also being asked to keep baggage to a minimum as security checks on excess luggage could delay journeys.
People planning to travel by car are being warned by the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead to book parking in advance, as spaces are limited.
Motorists should also be aware of road closures along the procession route which started at 22:00 BST on Friday.
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A chronology of key events:
| 1945 - After World War II, Japanese occupation of Korea ends with Soviet troops occupying the north, and US troops the south.
1946 - North Korea's Communist Party, called the Korean Workers' Party, inaugurated. Soviet-backed leadership installed, including Red Army-trained Kim Il-sung.
1948 - Democratic People's Republic of Korea proclaimed, with Kim Il-sung installed as leader. Soviet troops withdraw.
1950 - South declares independence, sparking North Korean invasion and the Korean War.
1953 - Armistice ends Korean War.
1960s - Rapid industrial growth.
1968 January - North Korea captures USS Pueblo, a US naval intelligence ship.
1972 - North and South Korea issue joint statement on peaceful reunification.
1974 February - Kim Il-sung designates eldest son, Kim Jong-il as his successor.
1985 - North Korea joins the international Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, barring the country from producing nuclear weapons.
1986 - Research nuclear reactor in Yongbyon becomes operational.
1991 - North and South Korea join the United Nations.
1993 - International Atomic Energy Agency accuses North Korea of violating the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and demands inspectors be given access to nuclear waste storage sites. North Korea threatens to quit Treaty.
1993 - North Korea test-fires a medium-range Rodong ballistic missile into the Sea of Japan.
1994 July - Death of Kim Il-sung. Kim Jong-il succeeds his father as leader.
1994 October - North Korea and the US sign an Agreed Framework under which Pyongyang commits to freezing its nuclear programme in return for heavy fuel oil and two light-water nuclear reactors.
Flood and famine
1996 - Severe famine follows widespread floods; 3 million North Koreans reportedly die from starvation.
1996 April - North Korea announces it will no longer abide by the armistice that ended the Korean War, and sends thousands of troops into the demilitarised zone.
1996 September - A North Korean submarine with 26 commandos and crew on board runs aground near the South Korean town of Gangneung. All but one on board is killed along with 17 South Koreans following several skirmishes.
1998 June - South Korea captures North Korean submarine in its waters. Crew found dead inside.
1998 August - North Korea fires a multistage long-range rocket which flies over Japan and lands in the Pacific Ocean, well beyond North Korea's known capability.
Historic handshake
2000 June - Landmark inter-Korean summit takes place in Pyongyang between Kim Jong-il and South Korean President Kim Dae-jung, paving the way for the reopening of border liaison offices and family reunions. The South also grants amnesty to over 3,500 North Korean prisoners.
2002 January - US President George W Bush labels North Korea, Iraq and Iran an "axis of evil" for continuing to build "weapons of mass destruction".
2002 June - North and South Korean naval vessels wage a gun battle in the Yellow Sea. Some 30 North Korean and four South Korean sailors are killed.
2002 September - Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi makes historic visit during which North Korea admits to having abducted 13 Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 1980s and that at least four are still alive.
Nuclear brinkmanship
2002 October - US and its key Asian allies Japan and South Korea halt oil shipments following North Korea's reported admission that it has secretly been developing a uranium-based nuclear programme.
2002 December - North Korea announces it is reactivating nuclear facilities at Yongbyon and expels UN inspectors.
2003 January - North Korea withdraws from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, marking the beginning of a series of six-party talks involving China, the Koreas, the US, Japan and Russia to try to resolve the nuclear issue.
2003 May - North Korea withdraws from 1992 agreement with South Korea to keep the Korean Peninsula free of nuclear weapons.
Six-party talks
2003 October - Pyongyang declares it has completed the reprocessing of 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods. Experts say this would give the North enough weapons-grade plutonium to develop up to six nuclear bombs within months.
2005 February - North Korea admits publicly for the first time that it has produced nuclear weapons for "self defence".
2006 July - North Korea test fires seven missiles including a long-range Taepodong-2 missile, which crashes shortly after take-off despite it reportedly having the capability to hit the US.
2006 October - North Korea conducts its first nuclear weapons test at an underground facility. The UN imposes economic and commercial sanctions on North Korea.
2007 July - North Korea shuts down it main Yongbyon reactor after receiving 50,000 tons of heavy fuel oil as part of an aid package.
2007 August - South Korea announces it will send nearly 50m US dollars in aid to the North after Pyongyang makes rare appeal for flood relief.
Nuclear declaration
2007 October - Second inter-Korean summit held in Pyongyang. President Roh Moo-hyun becomes the first South Korean leader to walk across the Demilitarized Zone separating North and South.
2008 March - North-South relations deteriorate sharply after new South Korean President Lee Myung-bak promises to take a harder line on North Korea.
2008 August - Kim Jong-il suffers a stroke
2008 October - North agrees to provide full access to Yongbyon nuclear site after US removes it from terrorism blacklist.
Nuclear tensions rise
2009 January - North Korea says it is scrapping all military and political deals with the South, accusing it of "hostile intent".
2009 April - North Korea launches a long-range rocket, carrying what it says is a communications satellite; its neighbours accuse it of testing long-range missile technology. Condemnation from the UN Security Council prompts North Korea to walk out of six-party talks and restart its nuclear facilities.
2009 May - North Korea carries out its second underground nuclear test. UN Security Council condemns move in June.
2009 August - North Korea frees American journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee after former US President Bill Clinton facilitates their release. The pair was sentenced to 12 years hard labour for allegedly crossing the border illegally.
North makes conciliatory gestures to South, sending delegation to funeral of former President Kim Dae-jung, releasing four South Korean fishermen, and agreeing to resume family reunions.
2009 November - North Korea's state-run news agency reports the reprocessing of 8,000 spent fuel rods is complete, garnering enough weapons-grade plutonium for one to two nuclear bombs.
2010 February - Increased social unrest reportedly leads the government to relax free market restrictions after a 2009 currency revaluation wiped out many cash savings in the country.
Sinking of Cheonan
2010 March - North Korea sinks South Korean warship Cheonan near sea border.
2010 September - Kim Jong-il's youngest son Kim Jong-un is appointed to senior political and military posts, fuelling speculation of a possible succession.
2010 November - North Korea reportedly shows an eminent visiting American nuclear scientist a new secretly-built facility for enriching uranium at its Yongbyon complex. The revelation sparks alarm and anger in US, South and Japan.
Cross-border clash near disputed maritime border results in the deaths of two South Korean marines. North Korea's military insists it did not open fire first and blames the South for the incident.
Succession
2011 December - Death of Kim Jong-il. Kim Jong-un presides at funeral and takes over key posts by April.
2012 April - Rocket launch - viewed internationally as a banned test of long-range Taepodong-2 missile technology - fails. North Korea says aim was to put a satellite into orbit to mark 100th birth anniversary of Kim Il-sung.
2012 October - North Korea claims it has missiles than can hit the US mainland after South Korea and Washington announce a deal to extend the range of South Korea's ballistic missiles.
2012 December - North Korea successfully launches a "rocket-mounted satellite" into orbit following a failed attempt in April.
Third nuclear test
2013 February - UN approves fresh sanctions after North Korea stages its third nuclear test, said to be more powerful than the 2009 test.
2013 April - North Korea says it will restart all facilities at its main Yongbyon nuclear complex and briefly withdraws its 53,000-strong workforce from the South-Korean-funded Kaesong joint industrial park stalling operations at 123 South Korean factories.
2013 July - Panama impounds a North Korean ship carrying two MiG-21 jet fighters under bags of sugar. The UN later blacklists the ship's operator.
2013 September - Sole ally China bans export to North Korea of items that could be used to make missiles or nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.
2013 December - Kim Jong-un's uncle, Chang Song-thaek, is found guilty of attempting to overthrow the state and is summarily executed - in a purge seen as the biggest shake-up since the death of Kim Jong-il in 2011.
2014 March - North Korea test-fires two medium-range Rodong ballistic missiles for the first time since 2009, in violation of UN resolutions and just hours after the US, South Korea and Japan met in the Netherlands for talks.
Two drones allegedly from North Korea are found in the south, sparking concerns about the north's intelligence gathering capabilities.
2014 October - Officials pay surprise visit to south, agree to resume formal talks that have been suspended since February.
2014 December - North Korea and US exchange accusations of cyber-attacks over a Sony Pictures film mocking Kim Jong-un, prompting new US sanctions the following month.
2015 August - South Korea halts loudspeaker propaganda broadcasts across the Demilitarised Zone after the North fires on them during annual US/South-Korean military exercises.
Nuclear push
2015 September - North Korea confirms it has put its Yongbyon nuclear plant - mothballed in 2007 - back into operation.
2015 December - US imposes new sanctions on North Korea over weapons proliferation, targeting the army's Strategic Rocket Force, banks and shipping companies.
2016 January - Government announcement of first hydrogen bomb test met with widespread expert scepticism.
2016 May - The ruling Workers Party holds its first congress in almost 40 years, during which Kim Jong-un is elected leader of the party.
2016 November - UN Security Council further tightens sanctions by aiming to cut one of North Korea's main exports, coal, by 60 per cent.
2017 January - Kim Jong-un says North Korea is in the final stages of developing long-range guided missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads.
2017 February - Kim Jong-un's estranged half-brother Kim Jong-nam is killed by a highly toxic nerve agent in Malaysia, with investigators suspecting North Korean involvement.
2017 July - Pyongyang test fires a long-range missile into the Sea of Japan, with some experts stating the missile could potentially reach Alaska.
2017 August - Tension rises in war of words with US over North Korean threat to fire ballistic missiles near US Pacific territory of Guam.
China announces it plans to implement the UN sanctions against North Korea agreed earlier in the month, banning imports of coal, minerals and sea food.
Summit diplomacy
2018 January - First talks in two years between North and South Koreas begin thaw that leads to the North sending a team to the Winter Olympics in the South.
2018 April - Kim Jong-un becomes first North Korean leader to enter the South when he meets South Korean President Moon Jae-in for talks at the Panmunjom border crossing. They agree to end hostile actions and work towards reducing nuclear arms on the peninsula.
2018 June - Kim Jong-un and US President Donald Trump's historic meeting in Singapore seeks to end a tense decades-old nuclear stand-off. A follow-up meeting in Hanoi in February 2019 breaks down after North Korea refuses nuclear disarmament in return for lifting economic sanctions.
2019 April - Kim Jong-un makes first visit to Russia, and receives support from President Vladimir Putin over security guarantees ahead of nuclear disarmament at a meeting in the far-eastern city of Vladivostok.
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Appalling news, again. | Tom EdwardsTransport correspondent, London@BBCTomEdwardson Twitter
Last night (Friday) another cyclist was killed at a junction in collision with a HGV.
Again the cyclist was a female and for the first time, the cyclist was riding a hire bike (also known as a"Boris bike"). It also appears the cyclist was on the blue-painted Cycle Superhighway 2.
This time the collision was at the junction of Commercial Road and Whitechapel Road in east London, a junction well-known to cyclists for not feeling safe.
We don't know the exact circumstances of what happened.
Whether the experience of the cyclist riding the hire bike is a factor we don't know. We also don't know yet if the painted blue lane of the Cycle Superhighway lulled the cyclist into a false sense of security.
Busiest routes
But this is bound to lead to more questions (again) about the safety of cycling in London.
London is embarking on safer segregated infrastructure particularly at junctions but this will again raise concerns about progress and speed of delivery.
There will also be many questions about where we are putting these Cycle Superhighways and how they encourage cyclists on to certain roads.
They are on the busiest routes to decrease cycling commuter times.
In 2012 Jenny Jones from the Green Party on the London Assembly raised concerns about this route, saying: "Traffic on red routes [is] too high for drivers to tolerate cyclists."
The bike hire and cycling superhighways are both Mayoral flagship transport projects and now someone has died while using them.
This death will undoubtedly raise the temperature in the safety debate.
It will also mean the Mayor will have to answer serious questions about the safety of his cycling schemes.
This is not the first cyclist to die at a junction on a cycling superhighway. Brian Dorling, a very experienced cyclist, died on a superhighway at Bow roundabout.
The overwhelming feeling it leaves me with, is that for all the education programmes on blind-spots and millions being invested in safety, and for all the well-meaning exchange programmes for cyclists and HGV drivers - I'm afraid it doesn't seem to be working yet.
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Things are happening in Spain. | By Laurence KnightBusiness reporter, BBC News
On Thursday, the government unveiled a draconian budget - its latest attempt to get its borrowing under control.
And on Friday, independent auditors confirmed that the country's banks would need an extra 59bn euros ($76bn; £47bn) - most of it from the government - to prop them up.
And then there's one other big event that many suspect is drawing closer - Spain's government is under pressure to request a formal bailout, not just for its banks, but also for itself.
Here, then, are the six big questions that are likely to be playing on Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's mind:
Can the government cut its borrowing?
Some economists would say this is a wrong-headed question.
Spain is stuck in an economic trap, they argue, with large debts, an overvalued currency and collapsing property market, and it is entirely right for the government to borrow and spend unprecedented amounts to prop the economy up.
But Spain's government has little choice about cutting its deficit - the gap between how much it spends each year and how much it earns in taxes.
That's because neither the financial markets, nor fellow eurozone governments, nor the European Central Bank (ECB) are willing to lend Spain the shortfall indefinitely.
Last year, the total government deficit stood at 8.5% of GDP (the economy's annual production).
Mr Rajoy has promised to cut this to 6.3% this year and to under 3% by 2014.
The problem is that cutting the deficit is proving much harder than expected.
Spending cuts hurt the economy, leading to lower tax revenues and higher spending on unemployment benefits, and hence more government borrowing than anticipated.
This year's 6.3% deficit target has already been revised up from 5.3%, and is still widely expected to be missed.
To complicate things further, much of the borrowing is carried out by Spain's regional governments and is beyond the direct control of Madrid.
And these figures do not take account of the large hidden losses in the banking sector that the government may have to shoulder.
How big is the hole at the banks?
An independent audit of the banks confirmed on Friday that the banks are short of some 59bn euros, or almost 6% of Spanish GDP.
This "hole" is the amount of capital that must be injected by the authorities to absorb the losses that the banks (especially regional savings banks) might suffer on all the loans they made to property developers and mortgage borrowers during the housing bubble of the last decade.
Some of the 59bn may also be provided by private sector investors, or by writing off the amount owed to some existing investors in the banks.
The housing bubble has burst and many of those loans cannot be repaid.
The eurozone has already made 100bn euros available from its rescue funds to plug this hole, although many investors suspect that the banks' needs may (eventually) exceed even this total.
For Spain, the question isn't just the size of the banks' losses.
It is still not clear who will ultimately bear them. Will it be the entire eurozone, through its 100bn-euro investment (as Madrid hopes), the Spanish government itself, or the (mostly Spanish) private sector investors in the banks?
The Irish government was sunk by the losses incurred by its own banks after it foolishly offered to guarantee them. Spain hopes to avoid the same fate.
Can the regions be brought into line?
Like the savings banks, Spain's regions are victims of the country's property boom and bust.
During the boom years, tax revenues were swelled by stamp duties on property sales, and by income taxes paid by immigrants that came to work on the country's construction sites.
Regional governments' tax revenues have collapsed during the recession. Yet their spending commitments - many of them dictated by laws written in Madrid - have not gone away so suddenly.
Their collective budget deficits were 2.9% of Spanish GDP in 2011, contributing about a third of the total government deficit.
Many regional governments now find it impossible to borrow from the markets, so the central government has set up an 18bn-euro rescue fund for them.
Five regions have already indicated they will need a collective 15bn euros from the fund, almost exhausting it.
In other words, the regional governments' debts are becoming central government debts.
The biggest region to ask for help is Catalonia. It is also the grumpiest.
The Catalans point out that their economy - arguably the strongest in Spain - makes an oversized contribution to central government taxes.
Instead of a bailout, Catalonia's government would rather get a bigger share of those tax revenues.
Many Catalans would go a step further. This month, more than a million massed in Barcelona to demand full independence for their linguistically distinct region.
Considering how much Catalonia contributes to Madrid's coffers, this is something the rest of Spain could ill afford.
Should Spain fear the markets?
Afraid that they might never get repaid in full (at least, not in euros), the financial markets until recently were threatening to pull the plug on Spain.
The implied interest rate the government faced for a 10-year loan hit 7.6% in July - far above the 1.2% faced by Germany, and unaffordable for Madrid in the long run.
But the government's problems were the least of it. Of more immediate concern was what was happening at Spain's banks.
Foreign lenders and investors started to demand their money back last year.
More worryingly, many companies and individuals - including Spaniards - also began moving their money out of Spanish bank accounts into safer foreign (particularly German) ones.
The best measure of how much money has fled Spain is the amount that the Spanish central bank has had to borrow from the ECB in order to replace it: 434bn euros as of August, or 40% of Spain's GDP.
If the government and the banks cannot borrow, then they cannot support the Spanish economy.
The government cannot pay benefits or public sector workers' wages. Banks cannot provide loans (not even to the government).
In other words, the panicky exodus of money from Spain threatened to push its economy off a cliff.
Things are (relatively) calmer now, largely thanks to the ECB.
Last December, the ECB's head, Mario Draghi, announced unlimited new three-year loans for eurozone banks. Spain's banks have been the biggest recipients.
And this month, he stared down opposition from Germany's central bank to offer eurozone governments open-ended assistance by buying up their shorter-term debts.
But this latest ruse, dubbed "Outright Monetary Transactions", comes with a big string attached - Spain's government must first submit itself to a rescue loan from Brussels, with full conditionality attached.
Should Spain fear Brussels?
Greece, Ireland and Portugal had to submit themselves to the humiliation of "conditionality" to get their bailouts.
They have had to accept painful spending cuts, tax rises and labour market reforms dictated by their eurozone peers, and to open their finances up to inspection by the European Commission, IMF, and ECB every three months.
Spain's economy is twice as big as those three countries put together.
And that economic heft has translated into political heft, helping Spain avoid any conditionality on the rescue loan already lined up for her banks.
But if Spain's government must now also seek a bailout for itself - as stipulated by the ECB - then it too must accept a loss of control over its own affairs.
How great a loss is far from clear. But there is good reason to think the terms will be more generous than those afforded to Greece, Ireland or Portugal.
It's not just that the other eurozone governments, above all Germany, see Spain as too big to push around. They are also increasingly cognisant that conditionality has backfired in Greece and elsewhere.
Should Spain fear its own voters?
Independence protesters in Catalonia are just one headache for Mr Rajoy.
A bigger one is that Spanish voters are already sick of spending cuts.
His socialist predecessor, Jose Luis Zapatero, won plaudits in Brussels for the zeal with which he attacked the deficit.
Voters rewarded him in November with a landslide election victory for his conservative opponents.
Since then, Mr Rajoy has tried to go easy on spending cuts. But now the markets (and the ECB) are giving him little choice.
With the economy back in recession and youth unemployment above 50%, the indignados - including thousands of students protesting against their dreadful job prospects - have continued to fill Madrid's Puerta del Sol.
And Mr Rajoy's poll ratings have dropped since he agreed to a Brussels bailout for the banks.
Unsurprisingly, he is doing everything he can to avoid an even bigger bailout for his own government. He would far rather push through spending cuts of his own initiative than have them imposed on him from abroad.
Yet he may have reason for hope, for the simple reason that his problems increasingly look to be the entire eurozone's problems as well.
In Greece, the popular backlash against spending cuts almost toppled the entire political establishment, raising the prospect that the country could eventually stop co-operating with Brussels altogether and leave the euro.
It has set a terrible precedent, and eurozone leaders in Brussels, Paris and Berlin have little appetite to push Spain to the brink as well.
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Cake and birthdays go hand in hand. | By Tori WatsonBBC News NI
However, on her first birthday, Akeelah Rose from County Down received an extra special scrumptious treat.
Her aunt, Leah O'Brien, had placed an order for a Peppa Pig themed cake at a bakery in Banbridge.
Little did she know that when she went to collect it, another customer had paid for it and left a card for the "birthday girl".
It read: "In honour of what would have been my little girl's first birthday, I have chosen to pay for your birthday cake.
"I am unable to buy my daughter a cake of her own today, but I hope you enjoy this one and have a fantastic birthday.
"God bless. Hannah's daddy."
'Such a kind gesture'
Ms O'Brien told BBC News NI she was "overwhelmed".
"I couldn't believe it, I was stunned," she added.
"I'd never heard of anything like this happening before.
"It was such a kind gesture, especially for this person to have thought of someone else at what must be a difficult time."
Determined to find out more about Hannah, and to thank her dad, Ms O'Brien posted pictures of the cake and card on Facebook.
"I honestly wasn't sure if the family would be happy with me posting about it or not, but I really wanted to reach out to them," she told BBC News NI.
"I wasn't expecting anywhere near the response that the post received."
'In Hannah's memory'
With thousands of people liking, sharing and commenting, it wasn't too long before Ms O'Brien uncovered the identity of Hannah's father - Gareth Brontë.
"Tuesday 10 September would've been my daughter's first birthday," he told BBC News NI.
"Unfortunately she died after eight days and I wasn't going to get the opportunity to buy her a birthday present or a birthday cake.
"But I wanted to share some kindness about in her memory.
"I walked into the bakery, asked to buy a cake and they asked if I had placed an order.
"I said: 'No, I want to pay for someone else's birthday cake' and explained the reason why."
Mr Brontë said "there were a few tears shed in the bakery" but that it just so happened there was a cake that had been ordered for a one-year-old girl.
"I had no clue who the family were, I just wanted to share a bit of good," he said.
"Some people had said my actions had restored some faith in humanity for them, but I didn't do it for that.
"I did it for Hannah."
Speaking to BBC News NI, Gareth's wife, Kirsty, said she hoped his actions would open a conversation for other parents who had lost children.
"It's nice for us to be able to talk about her and for other people to talk about Hannah too," she said.
"I hope it will help reduce stigma around grief and that parents will be able to talk about their kids the same way as they talk about the ones that are still here."
After Mr Brontë's act of kindness, Ms O'Brien felt driven to follow suit and put money towards another stranger's cake at the bakery.
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A chronology of key events:
| 1825 - Al-Thani dynasty establishes control over Qatar, which tries to establish independence from Bahraini suzerainty.
1871 - The Al-Thanis submit to Ottoman overlordship.
1916 - Deal signed under which Britain controls Qatar's external affairs in return for guaranteeing its protection.
Oil discovered
1939 - Oil reserves discovered. Exploitation is delayed by World War II, but oil comes to replace pearling and fishing as Qatar's main source of revenue.
1950s - Oil revenues fund the expansion and modernisation of Qatar's infrastructure.
Independence
1971 - Qatar becomes independent on 3 September.
1972 - Khalifa bin Hamad Al Thani takes power in a palace coup after infighting in the ruling family.
1990 August - After Iraq invades Kuwait, Qatar says it will allow foreign forces on its soil. Qatari troops later take part in the liberation of Kuwait.
1995 - Sheikh Khalifa deposed by his son, Hamad, in a bloodless coup.
1996 - Al-Jazeera satellite TV launches, as an independent channel funded by the emir. Based in Qatar but broadcasting to much of the Arab world, it establishes a reputation for its news coverage and willingness to tackle controversial issues.
1999 - Municipal elections, the first democratic polls since 1971, mark the start of a democratisation programme.
Iraq war
2002 - Qatar looms large in US plans for a possible war against Iraq. Its al-Udeid air base is developed and expanded. Washington says it will deploy US Central Command staff to Qatar.
2003 March-April - Qatar-based US Central Command forward base serves as the nerve centre in the US-led military campaign in Iraq.
2005 June - Qatar's first written constitution comes into effect, providing for some democratic reforms.
2005 November - Qatar and the US launch a $14 billion joint project to build the world's largest liquefied natural gas plant. Most of the gas will be exported to the US.
Regional role
2008 December - Saudi Arabia and Qatar agree final delineation of borders and pledge to boost co-operation after diplomatic relations restored in March.
2009 January - Qatar cuts trade ties with Israel over Gaza offensive. Was sole Gulf state to have trade ties with Israel.
2010 December - Qatar wins bid to host 2022 Fifa World Cup.
2011 March - Qatar joins international military operations in Libya, and goes on to arm Islamist opposition groups.
2011 November - Emir Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani says elections to the advisory council will be held in 2013, in what would be Qatar's first legislative elections, but these are repeatedly postponed.
2012 January - The Afghan Taliban say they are setting up a political office in Qatar to facilitate talks.
2012 October - Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al Thani visits Gaza, the first head of state to do so since Hamas took power there five years previously.
Sheikh Tamim takes over
2013 June - Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani takes over as emir after his father abdicates.
2014 September - Qatar and four other Arab states take part in US-led air strikes on Islamic State militants in Syria.
2015 March - Qatar and four other GCC states take part in Saudi-led air strikes on Houthi rebels in Yemen.
2016 December - Government says it is abolishing the controversial labour sponsorship system or "kafala" that forces foreign workers to seek their employers' consent to change jobs or leave the country.
2017 June - Diplomatic crisis as Saudi Arabia leads an air, land and sea blockade by Arab countries, in an attempt to get Qatar to cut its alleged connections with terrorism and distance itself from Iran.
2018 December - Qatar announces that it will withdraw from the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in January, citing its greater reliance of gas exports, although many regional analysts see it as a symbolic move away from Saudi influence.
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A chronology of key events:
| 1830 - France seizes Algiers, ending Algeria's three centuries as an autonomous province of the Ottoman Empire.
1939-1945 - The collapse of France and the Anglo-American occupation of North Africa during Second World War encourages hopes for independence.
1945 - Pro-independence demonstrations in Setif. Thousands are killed in suppression of ensuing unrest.
1954-1962 - Algerian War of Independence.
1962 - Algeria gains independence from France.
1963 - Ahmed Ben Bella elected as first president.
1965 - Col Houari Boumedienne overthrows Ben Bella, pledges to end corruption.
1976 - Col Boumedienne introduces a new constitution which confirms commitment to socialism and role of the National Liberation Front as the sole political party. Islam is recognised as state religion.
1976 December - Col Boumedienne is elected president and is instrumental in launching a programme of rapid industrialisation.
1978 - President Boumedienne dies and is replaced by Col Chadli Bendjedid, as the compromise candidate of the military establishment.
1986 - Rising inflation and unemployment, exacerbated by the collapse of oil and gas prices, lead to a wave of strikes and violent demonstrations.
Ban on parties lifted
1988 - Serious rioting against economic conditions.
1989 - The National People's Assembly revokes the ban on new political parties and adopts a new electoral law allowing opposition parties to contest future elections.
1989 - Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) founded and over 20 new parties licensed.
1990 - The FIS wins 55% of the vote in local elections.
1991 - In the first round of general elections in December the FIS wins 188 seats outright, and seems virtually certain to obtain an absolute majority in the second round.
Descent into conflict
1992 January-February - Army forces President Chadli to dissolve parliament and resign, replacing him with a Higher State Council chaired by Mohamed Boudiaf.
Government declares state of emergency and disbands the FIS and all its local and regional council administrations, triggering ten years of bloody conflict with Islamist groups.
1992 June - Head of State Boudiaf is assassinated by a member of his bodyguard with Islamist links. Violence increases and the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) emerges as the main group behind these operations.
1994 - Liamine Zeroual, a retired army colonel, is appointed chairman of the Higher State Council.
1995 - Col Zeroual wins presidential election with a comfortable majority.
1996 - Proposed constitutional changes approved in a referendum by over 85 per cent of voters.
1997 - Parliamentary elections won by the newly-created Democratic National Rally, followed by the Movement of Society for Peace moderate Islamic party.
1999 - Former Foreign Minister Abdelaziz Bouteflika elected president after all opposition candidates withdraw over concerns and fairness and transparency of poll.
1999 - Referendum approves President Bouteflika's law on civil concord, the result of long and largely secret negotiations with the armed wing of the FIS, the Islamic Salvation Army (AIS). Thousands of members of the AIS and other armed groups are pardoned.
2000 - Attacks on civilians and security forces continue, and are thought to be the work of small groups still opposed to the civil concord. Violence is estimated to have claimed over 100,000 lives in Algeria since 1992.
Berber concessions
2001 May - The mainly Berber party, the Rally for Culture and Democracy, withdraws from the government in protest against the authorities' handling of riots in the Kabylie Berber heartland.
2002 March - President Bouteflika says the Berber language, Tamazight, is to be recognised as a national language.
2002 June - Prime Minister Ali Benflis's National Liberation Front (FLN) wins general elections marred by violence and a low turnout. They are boycotted as a sham by four parties - two of which represent Berbers.
2003 21 May - More than 2,000 people are killed and thousands are injured by a powerful earthquake in the north. The worst-hit areas are east of Algiers.
2003 June - Leader of the outlawed Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) Abassi Madani and his deputy Ali Belhadj are freed after serving 12-year sentences.
2004 April - President Bouteflika is re-elected to a second term in a landslide poll victory.
2005 January - Authorities announce the arrest of rebel Armed Islamic Group (GIA) head Nourredine Boudiafi and the killing of his deputy, and declare the group to be virtually dismantled.
Government makes deal with Berber leaders, promising more investment in Kabylie region and greater recognition for Tamazight language.
2005 March - Government-commissioned report says security forces were responsible for the disappearances of more than 6,000 citizens during the 1990s civil conflict.
2005 September - Voters back government plans to amnesty many of those involved in post-1992 killings in a reconciliation referendum.
2006 May - Algeria is to pay back all of its $8bn debt to the Paris Club group of rich creditor nations, in a move seen as reflecting its economic recovery.
Rise of al-Qaeda
2006 December - Roadside bomb hits a bus carrying staff of a US oil firm, killing one man. The Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) claims responsibility.
2007 January - GSPC renames itself the al-Qaeda Organisation in the Islamic Maghreb and steps up attacks through over the next two years.
2007 April - Thirty-three people are killed in two bomb blasts in Algiers - one the prime minister's office. Al-Qaeda claims responsibility.
2007 May - Parliamentary elections: dozens are killed in the run-up, in a wave of fighting between the military and armed groups. Pro-government parties retain their absolute majority in parliament.
2007 September - Al-Qaeda's second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri urges north Africa's Muslims to ''cleanse'' their land of Spaniards and French.
2008 November - Parliament approves constitutional changes allowing President Bouteflika to run for a third term.
2009 April - President Bouteflika wins third term at the polls.
2009 July - Nigeria, Niger and Algeria sign an agreement to build a $13bn pipeline to take Nigerian gas across the Sahara to the Mediterranean.
2010 April - Algeria, Mauritania, Mali and Niger set up joint command to tackle threat of terrorism.
Protests
2011 January - Major protests over food prices and unemployment, with two people being killed in clashes with security forces. The government orders cuts to the price of basic foodstuffs.
2011 February - President Abdelaziz Bouteflika lifts 19-year-old state of emergency - a key demand of anti-government protesters.
2011 September - President Bouteflika ends state monopoly over radio and TV.
2012 May - Parliamentary poll: Ruling FLN and allied National Democratic Rally win another majority in parliament, with Islamists coming third, although some MPs allege fraud.
2012 October - The army kills al-Qaeda's deputy leader in Algeria, Boualem Bekai, alias Khaled al-Mig, in an ambush near Tizi Ouzou in the Kabylie region.
2012 December - French President Francois Hollande acknowledges suffering caused by France's colonisation of Algeria but stops short of an apology.
2013 January - Dozens of foreign hostages are killed by Islamist al-Murabitoun group in four-day siege at remote In Amenas gas plant. Algerian special forces storm the site.
2013 April - President Bouteflika suffers a stroke and spends three months in France being treated.
2014 April - Bouteflika wins another term as president in elections condemned by the opposition as flawed.
2014 September - Islamists behead French tourist Herve Gourdel after demanding that France end its support for the campaign against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
2015 June - US airstrike reported to kill Mokhtar Belmokhtar, leader of the al-Murabitoun armed Islamist group, in eastern Libya, although his supporters deny this.
2015 September - President Bouteflika sacks Mohamed Mediene, head of the top intelligence body for 25 years; he was regarded as a major power behind the scenes.
2016 - February - Parliament passes constitutional reforms limiting presidents to two terms, expanding the legislature's power and giving the Berber language official status.
2018 January - New Year celebrated by the Berber people is marked for the first time as a national public holiday.
End of Bouteflika
2019 April - Street protests prompt President Bouteflika to resign, having earlier postponed presidential elections because of political turmoil.
Abdelkader Bensalah, the speaker of the upper house of parliament, becomes interim president, but protests continue.
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A chronology of key events:
| 1525 - Spain begins conquest of Colombia.
1536-38 - Spain establishes the settlement of Santa Fe de Bogota, which subsequently becomes known as Bogota, the current capital; becomes part of the Spanish vice-royalty of Peru.
1718 - Bogota becomes the capital of the Spanish vice-royalty of Nueva Granada, which also rules Ecuador and Venezuela.
1819 - Simon Bolivar defeats Spanish at Boyaca. Republic of Gran Colombia formed with Ecuador, Panama and Venezuela.
1829-30 - Gran Colombia dissolved when Venezuela and Ecuador split off, leaving present-day Colombia and Panama a separate state known as Nueva Granada.
1849 - Conservative and Liberal parties founded.
1861-85 - Liberal Party rule sees country divided into nine largely autonomous entities and the church separated from the state.
1885 - Start of 45 years of Conservative Party rule during which power is recentralised and church influence restored.
1899-1902 - "The War of the Thousand Days": around 120,000 people die in civil war between Liberals and Conservatives. Panama becomes an independent state.
1930 - Liberal President Olaya Herrera elected by coalition; social legislation introduced and trade unions encouraged.
1946 - Conservatives return to power.
1948 - Assassination of presidential hopeful Jorge Eliecer Gaitan ignites riots in Bogota.
1948-57 - 250,000-300,000 killed in civil war.
1958 - Conservatives and Liberals agree to form National Front in a bid to end the civil war; other parties banned.
Guerrilla war
1964 - Leftist National Liberation Army (ELN) and Maoist People's Liberation Army (EPL) founded.
1966 - Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc, the current largest guerrilla grouping) set up.
1970 - National People's Alliance formed as a left-wing counterweight to the National Front.
1971 - Left-wing M-19 guerrilla group emerges.
1978 - President Julio Turbay (Liberal) begins intensive fight against drug traffickers.
1982 - President Belisario Betancur (Conservative) grants guerrillas amnesty and frees political prisoners.
War against drug cartels stepped up
1984 - Campaign against drug traffickers stepped up following assassination of justice minister.
1985 - Eleven judges and 90 other people killed after M-19 guerrillas force their way into the Palace of Justice; Patriotic Union Party (UP) founded.
Nevado del Ruiz volcano erupts. An estimated 23,000 people are killed in four Andean towns.
1986 - Virgilio Barco Vargas (Liberal) wins presidential elections by record margin. Right-wing paramilitary groups begin murder campaign against UP politicians, amid continuing violence by left-wing groups and death squads run by drugs cartels.
1989 - M-19 becomes legal party after reaching peace agreement with government.
Liberal and UP presidential candidates murdered during presidential election campaign, reputedly at the behest of drug cartels; Cesar Gaviria elected on anti-drug platform.
1991 - New constitution legalises divorce, prohibits extradition of Colombians wanted for trial in other countries and guarantees indigenous peoples' democratic rights, but without addressing their territorial claims.
1993 - Pablo Escobar, Medellin drug-cartel leader, shot dead while trying to evade arrest.
1995 - Ernesto Samper Pizano (Liberal) elected president and is subsequently charged and cleared of receiving drug-cartel money for his election campaign.
Peace talks
1998 - Andres Pastrana Arango - a Conservative - elected president, begins peace talks with guerrillas.
1998 November - Pastrana grants Farc a safe haven the size of Switzerland in the south-east to help move peace talks along. The zone is off-limits to the army.
1999 January - Peace talks formally launched but proceed in stop-start fashion. Pastrana and Farc leader Manuel "Sureshot" Marulanda meet.
1999 January - Powerful earthquake kills some 1,000 people. Cities of Armenia and Pereira badly hit.
Plan Colombia
2000 July - Pastrana's "Plan Colombia" wins almost US$1 billion in mainly military aid from the US to fight drug-trafficking and rebels who profit and protect the trade.
2000 September - Government freezes talks; alleges Farc harboured hijacker of plane forced to land in safe haven. Later, Farc refuses to resume talks, accuses Pastrana of not stopping paramilitary groups.
2001 February - The Farc return to peace talks after meeting between "Sureshot" and Pastrana. Pastrana extends demilitarized area for eight months.
2001 June - Farc rebels free 359 police and troops in exchange for 14 captured rebels. Farc accused of using safe haven to rearm, prepare attacks and conduct drug trade.
2001 October - Government, Farc sign San Francisco agreement, committing themselves to negotiate ceasefire. Pastrana extends life of safe haven until January 2002.
2002 January - Pastrana accepts Farc ceasefire timetable and extends safe haven until April.
Talks fail
2002 February - Pastrana breaks off three years of tortuous peace talks with Farc rebels, says hijacking of aircraft hours earlier is final straw. He orders rebels out of demilitarised zone. Government declares war zone in south after rebels step up attacks.
2002 May - Independent candidate Alvaro Uribe wins a first-round presidential election victory, promises to crack down hard on rebel groups.
2002 August - Moments before Alvaro Uribe is sworn in as president, suspected Farc explosions rock Bogota. Twenty people are killed. Days later, Uribe declares state of emergency.
2003 October - 14 out of 15 of President Uribe's planned austerity measures and political reforms rejected by voters in referendum. Three ministers, national police chief resign.
2003 November - Fighters from right-wing United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC) begin to disarm.
2004 May - Farc's Ricardo Palmera, the most senior Colombian guerrilla ever captured, is jailed for 35 years.
2004 July - Right-wing AUC and government begin peace talks. AUC leaders address Congress.
2005 January - Bitter 15-day dispute with Venezuela over the capture of a Farc leader on Venezuelan soil. The affair is resolved at talks in Caracas in February.
2005 June - New law offers reduced jail terms and protection from extradition for paramilitaries who turn in their arms. Rights groups say the legislation is too lenient.
2005 December - Exploratory peace talks with the second biggest left-wing rebel group, the National Liberation Army (ELN), begin in Cuba.
2006 February - Colombia and the US agree on a free trade deal. The agreement awaits ratification in both countries.
Uribe's second term
2006 March - Parties loyal to President Uribe win an overwhelming victory in parliamentary elections.
2006 May - President Uribe wins a second term in office.
2006 November - Court investigates possible ties between high-ranking politicians from Sucre department and right-wing paramilitaries.
2006 December - Detained paramilitary leaders say they are pulling out of a peace process. Government says demobilisation of right-wing groups will continue.
2007 January - Ecuador turns to the Organisation of American States (OAS) for help with its challenge to Colombia's coca crop-spraying programme along their common border.
2007 June - Government releases dozens of jailed Farc guerrillas, in hope that rebels will reciprocate by releasing hostages. Farc rejects move, saying it will only free hostages if government pulls back troops and sets up demilitarised zone.
2007 July - Hundreds of thousands protest in Bogota against kidnappings and conflict in the country.
Hostage release talks
2007 September - In his role as mediator, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez agrees to invite rebels for talks on hostage release deal.
2007 November - Colombia sets deadline of 31 December for President Chavez to reach deal with rebels on prisoner swap.
2007 November - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez withdraws his country's ambassador to Bogota in a row over his role in negotiations between the Colombian government and rebel forces.
2008 January - The Farc releases two high-profile hostages, Clara Rojas and Consuelo Gonzalez, as a result of Mr Chavez's mediation.
Mr Chavez calls on the US and European governments to stop treating Colombian left-wing rebel groups as terrorists, but Mr Uribe rejects the idea.
2008 March - A Colombian cross-border strike into Ecuador kills senior Farc rebel Raul Reyes and sparks a diplomatic crisis with both Ecuador and Venezuela.
2008 May - Colombia extradites 14 paramilitary warlords to the United States to stand trial on drug trafficking charges. US hails move as evidence Colombia deserves trade deal. Colombian opposition complains the extraditions mean that the militia leaders will not reveal their alleged links to political allies of Mr Uribe.
Farc announces death of its leader and founder, Manuel Marulanda.
2008 June - Colombia renews low-level diplomatic relations with Ecuador.
Betancourt freed
2008 July - Colombian army rescues the country's highest-profile hostage, Ingrid Betancourt, held in captivity for six years by Farc. She was among 15 hostages freed in an operation in the southern-central region of Guaviare.
2008 November - The sudden collapse of pyramid investment schemes - used by some of the poorest savers - triggers violent protests. Several towns are put under curfew.
2009 February - Farc rebels free six high-profile hostages, including a former provincial governor held since 2001.
2009 March - Farc releases a Swedish man thought to be the group's last foreign hostage, Erik Roland Larsson.
President Alvaro Uribe offers Farc rebels peace talks if they halt "criminal activities" and declare a cease-fire.
2009 July-August - Relations with Venezuela deteriorate again after plans to allow US troops to use Colombian military bases as part of a drive to curb drug-trafficking are unveiled.
Venezuela withdraws its ambassador from Bogota and freezes relations after the Colombian government accuses Caracas of supplying arms to Farc rebels; Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez accuses Colombia of carrying out a military incursion into his country.
2009 October - Colombia and US sign deal giving the US military access to seven Colombian bases.
2009 November - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez urges his armed forces to be prepared for war with Colombia and orders 15,000 troops to the border, amid growing tensions.
Former army Gen Jaime Humberto Uscategui is given 40-year jail sentence for his role in killing of unarmed civilians by right-wing paramilitaries.
Common cause
2009 December - The Marxist rebel groups - the Farc and the smaller National Liberation Army (ELN) - announce that they intend to stop fighting each other and concentrate on attacking the armed forces.
2010 July - Venezuela cuts diplomatic ties with Colombia after being accused of harbouring Farc rebels.
2010 August - Juan Manuel Santos takes over as president, having won easy victory in run-off election in June. He responds to a Farc offer of talks by insisting that the rebel group must first release all the hostages it still holds.
Colombia and Venezuela restore diplomatic ties.
2010 September - Farc steps up its campaign of violence. Colombian army kills senior Farc commander Mono Jojoy in air strike in Macarena region.
2011 February - Farc releases several hostages in what it describes as a unilateral "gesture of peace" to the government.
2011 May - Senate approves law to compensate victims of civil conflict and return land to millions of displaced people.
2011 August - President Santos outlines new tactics against rebels, who have increasingly been resorting to hit-and-run raids.
2011 September - Former intelligence chief Jorge Noguera - a close ally of former president Alvaro Uribe - is sentenced to 25 years in prison for collaborating with paramilitary death squads.
2011 October - US Congress passes long-delayed free trade agreement with Colombia, despite concerns over country's poor record of labour relations.
2011 November - Colombian military kills Farc leader Alfonso Cano, who succeeded founder Manuel Marulanda in 2008. Timoleon Jimenez, alias Timochenko, becomes new leader of the guerrilla group.
2012 August - President Santos says exploratory talks are under way with Farc, and that the ELN armed group has also indicated a readiness to talk. Congress approves a law providing for peace talks in June.
2012 October - President Santos apologises to indigenous leaders in the Amazon region for the killing of 80,000 indigenous people in the 1912-29 rush to harvest latex in the area.
One of Colombia's most wanted drug dealers, Henry de Jesus Lopez, is arrested in Argentina. He is the suspected leader of the Urabenos gang, which controls much of the drugs trade in northern Colombia.
New push for peace
2012 November - Farc rebels declare a two-month ceasefire as peace talks with government begin in Cuba.
International Court of Justice in the Hague rules that a group of disputed Caribbean islands belong to Colombia, not Nicaragua, but expands the disputed maritime border in favour of Nicaragua.
2014 June - President Santos wins another four-year term in office.
2015 January - President Santos says government ready for bilateral ceasefire with Farc, after welcoming Farc's December unilateral ceasefire.
2015 September - The government and Farc to set up special courts to try crimes committed during conflict, as well as truth commission and amnesty law.
2015 December - The two sides sign a key deal on paying reparations and ensuring justice for victims of the conflict.
2016 March - The government and Farc delay the signing of a final agreement, citing remaining differences at the talks, and will now seek a deal by the end of 2016.
The government says it is starting formal peace talks with the ELN armed group.
Peace deal
2016 June - The government and Farc sign a definitive ceasefire and disarmament agreement, a precursor to a comprehensive peace deal.
2016 September - The government and Farc sign a historic peace accord that formally brings to an end 52 years of armed conflict.
2016 October - Voters reject government's peace deal with Farc by a narrow margin in a national referendum. President Santos vows to continue talks with the rebels. He is awarded the Nobel Peace prize for his efforts to bring the long-running conflict to an end.
2016 November - The government and Farc sign a revised peace deal after an earlier agreement was rejected in a popular referendum amid objections that it was too favourable to the rebels.
2017 June - FARC rebels formally end their existence as an armed group, after a campaign lasting half a century.
2017 October - A temporary ceasefire between the government and the rebel National Liberation Army (ELN) comes into effect after more than fifty years of conflict.
2017 November - A year after the peace treaty was signed with FARC militants, dissidents of the rebel group continue to battle the armed forces.
2018 May - Peace talks resume between the government and the ELN rebel group.
2018 June - Ivan Duque wins the presidential election.
2019 August - Fomrer Farc rebel group commander Ivan Marquez defies 2016 peace agreement and calls on supporters to take up arms again.
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Quarantine and chill? Maybe not. | That's been the reality for many couples in the UK since lockdown rules - which state we can only leave the house if it is essential - came into place.
Unfortunately, seeing your other half - if you don't live with them - isn't classed as essential.
The deputy chief medical officer, Dr Jenny Harries, warned that couples could pass on the virus if they continue to visit each other at their individual homes.
She suggested couples "test" their relationship and move in together while the lockdown restrictions are in place.
'It isn't the fairytale I'd always dreamed of'
One couple who decided to take that test and move in together are 27-year-old Laura Collins and her partner Jon Pearson. They've always lived separately during their four-year relationship - both in Cheltenham.
Laura says she couldn't think of anything worse than being alone in her flat during the lockdown - so once it was announced the couple decided to move into Jon's parents' house in Cornwall.
"Jon's currently working in his childhood room, he's surrounded by teddy bears, Pokemon cards and his old Guitar Hero set - it's quite funny," Laura tells Radio 1 Newsbeat.
"It's a little bit different to how I pictured us moving in together but it's nice to be together and have our lunch breaks together in the garden."
So what's it like moving back in with your parents for the first time in eight years - with your girlfriend - during a global pandemic?
"We're not getting on each other's nerves yet," Jon tells us. "But dad gets annoyed at small things, like if we don't empty the dishwasher."
Jon and Laura never planned on moving to Cornwall, but they're making the most of it now they're there.
But it's not just happy couples like Jon and Laura who took the plunge.
'I moved in with my ex'
Yes, you read that right.
Kieran Lineham and AJ James, both 23, were a couple for four years but split five months ago and have remained "really good friends".
"It's not awkward or anything like that - we make jokes about it and so does the family," AJ tells Newsbeat.
When there were rumours of a lockdown, AJ asked Kieran where he would prefer to stay: "For some reason he said he'd like to live in my mad house for three weeks."
So he moved in with her, her parents and her younger brother.
"I think my family love him more than me, they'd happily trade us in.
"As soon as the lockdown finishes, he's off. His dad can have him back," AJ says.
They've both still been working - Kieran is a lorry driver and AJ is a carer for people with special needs.
Kieran says he was, and still is, confused that he was invited over.
The two have been sharing a bed with AJ's dog, but insist it is unlikely they will get back together.
'We're travelling the world... virtually'
From London to Paris to New York - Riya and Rajeev have decided to virtually tour the world.
They've been together for just under a year and live separately - but have been making "extra effort" to keep things interesting in lockdown.
So far, it's been an exploration of museums, visiting the Guggenheim and Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Louvre in Paris online together.
"It's cool being able to still see amazing places and travelling the world, albeit through the internet rather than a plane," Riya, 23, says.
Rajeev even made an effort by putting on a shirt - which isn't all that common nowadays.
But their relationship isn't all about touring the world.
Tips for keeping your relationship healthy in lockdown
Sami Wunder, dating and relationships coach
1. Give your partner and yourself enough time to look after yourselves. You can read a book while your husband plays PlayStation, get that space and freedom. You shouldn't expect that because you are both at home you should do everything together.
2. Romance doesn't have to completely disappear just because you're stuck at home. You can make date night at home - have a candlelit dinner, dress up and look good.
3. Be honest about any challenges and work towards a solution. If you think there's not enough physical intimacy, make time for it. Do things which connect each other, such as giving a nice massage.
4. It's a chance to be creative, especially if you're not living with your partner. Send flowers, meals and thoughtful letters - and surprise one another.
5. Lockdown is also a good opportunity to revisit your priorities in life. Even though it might feel like you're caged in, it can actually be a great opportunity to connect with your loved ones and do things you couldn't do before.
Riya and Rajeev have also created a reading club for themselves, subscribing to each other's favourite publications - the New York Times for Riya and Medium for Rajeev - and then discussing what they read.
And Riya's even taken the time to understand Rajeev's job (he's a data scientist) a little better.
"I was doing a coding tutorial to find out more. And now I kind of understand. It was cool to learn and a good skill," she says.
They say all these activities have been important for their relationship.
"It's nice to do these interesting things rather than just staying at home, because then you get a bit negative and start bugging each other about the situation you're in," Rajeev says.
"This way you're making each other feel good and having new shared experiences."
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