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What just happened? | Laura KuenssbergPolitical editor@bbclaurakon Twitter
Brexit was always going to be difficult, it's complicated.
The Tory party doesn't agree with itself, the government is split and Brussels is not looking to give us an easy ride.
The Brexit secretary claimed a victory, but in Westminster what starts out as a "win" can, by morning, seem like a hollow victory.
And tonight, senior figures in government are questioning whether David Davis really achieved very much.
May and Davis agree customs backstop wording
Reality check: Brexit backstop proposals
He may have saved face after making a huge fuss but look carefully at the concession he won, they say, and it doesn't really mean very much.
A few words here, a loosening up of the planned language there, perhaps the victory really was Theresa May's?
Did she pull a fast one on him, making him believe he had pulled off a huge win, when in fact, he walked away with only a few crumbs?
Hold on.
Whatever words were agreed, whatever substance was changed - and indeed, the alterations are not substantial - let's look at the big picture.
The prime minister was blocked from forging ahead with her hoped-for plan because one of her ministers stopped her in her tracks.
The disagreement played out extremely publicly, and in the end, she chose to budge, rather than risk a resignation that could have shaken the government to the core.
Perhaps David Davis's credibility has taken a knock. A resignation threat that isn't acted on dulls the potency of the (potential) next one.
But some Brexiteers are convinced that today's shenanigans show that when they really push Theresa May, they can move her, even though over many months they have accepted the grinding inevitability of compromise.
That is not what happens when prime ministers are 100% in charge.
That is not what happens when an administration is firing on all cylinders, when it is driving the agenda, and creating forward momentum.
And for her rivals and internal critics, of whom there are plenty, Theresa May seems tonight just that bit easier to push around.
Then, just when things might have seemed to be calming down, a recording of the foreign secretary's own views on Brexit was leaked to the news site Buzzfeed, where he was heard, urging the prime minister to show more guts, warning there could be a Brexit "meltdown".
It's not surprising that he holds those views, nor indeed that they made their way into the ether.
But frankly, it's not just guts that Theresa May needs, but all the help she can get.
And if the last 24 hours are anything to go by, that help is not coming from all of her colleagues.
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Health and education | George Osborne has delivered his eighth Budget as chancellor. Here are the main points of what he said.
A new sugar tax on the soft drinks industry to be introduced in two years' time, raising £520m a year to be spent on doubling funding for primary school sport in England
Levy to be calculated on levels of sugar in sweetened drinks produced and imported, based on two bands
Pure fruit juice and milk-based drinks to be excluded and small suppliers will be exempt
Secondary schools in England to bid for £285m in new funding for extra after-school activities like sport and art
Plan for all schools in England to become academies by 2022
Compulsory maths lessons until 18 to be looked at
£500m to ensure "fair funding" formula for schools in England
Libor funds to be spent on children's hospital services, specifically in Manchester, Sheffield, Birmingham and Southampton
Analysis: How will sugar tax work?
Twitter response to sugar levy
Analysis: What does it mean to be an academy school?
The state of the economy
Growth forecasts revised down markedly for next five years
Growth forecast to be 2% in 2016, down from 2.4% in November's Autumn Statement
GDP predicted to grow 2.2% and 2.1% in 2017 and 2018, down from 2.4% and 2.5% forecast four months ago
Outlook for global economy is "materially weaker" and UK "not immune" to slowdown elsewhere
The UK still forecast to grow faster than any other major Western economy
A million jobs forecast to be created by 2020
Inflation forecast to be 0.7% for 2016, rising to 1.6% next year
Analysis: Kamal Ahmed on Osborne's 2020 surprise
Public borrowing/deficit/spending
Further cuts of £3.5bn by 2020, with spending as a share of GDP set to fall to 36.9%
Debt targets to be missed. Forecast debt as a share of GDP revised up in each of the next five years to 82.6% in 2016-17 and 81.3%, 79.9%, 77.2% and 74.7% in subsequent years
Debt to be £9bn lower in 2015-16 in cash terms
Annual borrowing in 2015-6 forecast to be £72.2bn, £1.3bn lower than forecast in November
Public finances still projected to achieve a £10.4bn surplus in 2019-2020
But borrowing forecasts revised up to £55.5bn (+£5.6bn), £38.8bn (+£14bn) and £21.4bn (+16.8bn) in 2016-7, 2017-8 and 2018-9 respectively
The deficit as a share of GDP is projected to fall to 2.9% in 2016-17, 1.9% in 2017-18 and 1% in 2018-19
Personal taxation
The threshold at which people pay 40% income tax will rise from £42,385 now to £45,000 in April 2017. Will only apply to Scotland if adopted by Scottish government
Tax-free personal allowance, the point at which people pay income tax, to rise from £11,000 in April 2016 to £11,500 in April 2017
Capital Gains Tax to be cut from 28% to 20%, and from 18% to 10% for basic-rate taxpayers
Insurance premium tax to rise from 9.5% to 10%
Class 2 National Insurance contributions abolished, which the government says gives a tax cut of more than £130 to three million self-employed workers from 2018
Analysis: What the Budget means for you?
Alcohol, tobacco, gambling and fuel
Fuel duty to be frozen at 57.95p per litre for sixth year in a row
Beer, cider, and spirits duties to be frozen
Inflation rise in duties on wine and other alcohol
Excise duties on tobacco to rise by 2% above inflation
Pensions and savings
Annual Isa limit to rise from £15,240 to £20,000
New "lifetime" Isa for the under-40s, with government putting in £1 for every £4 saved
People who save a maximum of £4,000 towards a home deposit or retirement will get a £1,000 top-up from the state every year until they turn 50
New state-backed savings scheme for low-paid workers, worth up to £1,200 over four years
The Money Advice Service, which has provided financial advice to consumers since 2010, is to be abolished
Business
Headline rate of corporation tax - currently 20% - to fall to 17% by 2020
Annual threshold for 100% relief on business rates for small firms to rise from £6,000 to £12,000 and the higher rate from £18,000 to £51,000, exempting 600,000 firms
Supplementary charge for oil and gas producers to be halved from 20% to 10%
Debt interest payments used by larger firms to cut corporation tax bills will be capped at 30% of earnings.
Petroleum revenue tax to be "effectively abolished"
Anti-tax avoidance and evasion measures to raise £12bn by 2020
Use of "personal service companies" by public sector employees to reduce tax liabilities to end
Crackdown on foreign firms selling products online in UK without paying VAT
Commercial stamp duty 0% rate on purchases up to £150,000, 2% on next £100,000 and 5% top rate above £250,000. New 2% rate for high-value leases with net present value above £5m. Effective from midnight
Analysis: Simon Jack on the winners and losers
Housing/infrastructure/transport/regions/energy/culture
Powers over criminal justice to be devolved to Greater Manchester and Greater London Assembly to retain business rates
New rail lines to get green light, including Crossrail 2 in London and the HS3 link between Manchester and Leeds
More than £230m earmarked for road improvements in the north of England, including upgrades to M62
£700m for flood defences schemes, including projects in York, Leeds, Calder Valley, Carlisle and across Cumbria
Tolls on Severn River crossings between England and Wales to be halved by 2018
£115m to tackle rough sleeping and homelessness, funding 2,000 places
In Scotland, Libor bank fines to pay for community facilities in Helensburgh and for naval personnel at Faslane
New elected mayors for cities and towns in southern England
New tax relief for museums to boost temporary and touring exhibitions
New Shakespeare for the North theatre in Knowsley, Merseyside
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Mark this date in your calendars. | Karishma VaswaniAsia business correspondent@KarishmaBBCon Twitter
When you look back, you'll remember it as the day the Chinese yuan began its journey to become one of the world's most important currencies.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has announced that the yuan is now part of an elite basket of currencies that until now included only the US dollar, the Japanese yen, the euro and the British pound.
The yuan won't actually start being a part of the basket until September 2016 - so this move won't have any immediate impact on financial markets.
But don't kid yourself. This largely symbolic gesture is an historic one - and a sign that China is rising ever faster and further on the global financial stage.
So what does that mean for the rest of us? Well, by some accounts it's the start of a whole new world order.
Nomura Securities predicts that by 2030 the yuan will become one of the top three major international currencies - "a peer to the US dollar and the euro as the most used currencies in the world."
But all of this depends on whether China continues its financial reforms - which have been one of the main reasons behind the IMF's decision to include the yuan in this elite basket.
The IMF said the decision was "an important milestone in the integration of the Chinese economy into the global financial system" and that it would bring about "a more robust international monetary and financial system".
A whole lot more yuan
Nomura says that although the yuan's share of trading volumes in the international currency market is still small - less than 2% relative to China's share of global gross domestic product - that its daily trading volume tripled between 2010 and 2013, from $34bn (£22.6bn) to $120bn.
That means there's a whole lot more yuan on the markets.
China has been working towards this for the last few years - and it's remarkable that their highly managed currency has been deemed fit to enter this special basket of freely traded currencies.
Beijing sees the inclusion of the yuan as a sign of just how important China has become to the global financial system.
In order to make this happen, the world's second largest economy has pushed through a number of changes in recent times - including allowing foreign investors to access its stock markets.
Transparency key
But just how transparent China will be about the way it runs its financial markets will be a key determinant as to whether the yuan gets to the next step.
It's clearly become an ambition for the powers that be in Beijing to see the yuan become a true global currency - alongside the US dollar, the yen and the euro.
In the face of slowing economic growth in China, analysts have acknowledged there have been some worrying signs that the government is either trying to roll back on some key financial reforms - or that the chaps in charge really don't know what they're doing.
Case in point: the effective devaluation of the yuan earlier this year took markets by surprise - and the People's Bank of China was widely criticised for mishandling the communication around how those events unfolded.
Now, Chinese officials will be under even more pressure - and scrutiny - to get their message right. The world will be watching to see what kind of impact more yuan circulating the international markets will have.
If the yuan becomes a fixture of the global economy, then it's likely the rest of the world will become even more exposed to what Beijing does - which will make it ever more important that China's leaders push through meaningful financial reforms.
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There's always that one house. | By Caroline McClatcheyBBC News
The one that will bring joy to some neighbours and despair to others.
They're the people who don't believe in minimal and didn't wait until the first Sunday of Advent to deck the halls with boughs of holly.
Mary Laughlin is a fully-fledged member of that club - her Christmas decorations went up on 3 October.
The 54-year-old from west Belfast does not do Halloween - it just gets in the way of the main event.
Like all these things, it started small with a tree and a Santa when her three children were young, but it then snowballed.
There's a blow-up polar bear, Santa and Nutcracker drummer in the front garden - not to mention 3,000 lights.
Inside, no room is left untouched.
"I just keep adding every year," she said.
"When the sales come on after Christmas, I just go and buy but I am topping up even now.
"I saw some decorations online the other night but my grandchildren said I had no room for them."
She said people often stop at the gate and linger.
"I love seeing the kids' faces," she said.
Stephen Wilson admits he is the biggest kid in his house.
The 42-year-old salesman "would go earlier" than the end of November but his friends would "slag" him off too much.
Mr Wilson has 4,000 lights outside his home in Letterbreen, near Enniskillen in County Fermanagh.
"We are way out in the country and our house is up on a hill, and it does look like Hansel and Gretel's house," he said.
The 14 sets are controlled from three different parts of the house and some of the lights stay up all year round.
While he might not have to spend hours detangling every year, it must be extremely tense when it comes to that universally-dreaded moment of truth - will the lights actually work?
Only one set failed this year but that was no bother for Mr Wilson - rather conveniently, he's a former electrician.
"My dad was an electrical contractor and I worked in the shop, surrounded by lights, since I was 11," he said.
What about the electricity bill?
"My wife pays it so I don't have to think about it but she has not complained," he said.
"They're LED so it cannot be that bad. Though everybody always says the power dips in Enniskillen when I turn my lights on."
Clare Byrne believes her mum Deirdre Byrne-Lennon is the biggest Christmas fan in Northern Ireland.
But the 59-year-old is not concerned with the outside - it's all about the indoor trees (four and counting) and homemade decorations.
"She has always made it big and she's getting even earlier," she said.
"She reared us on her own and so I think Christmas was her time to spoil us. We wanted for nothing, though it doesn't compare to what they get nowadays.
"My sister Catherine has Down's syndrome and still lives with mum, and I think that is a big part of it."
Another sister, Orlaigh, also lives at the family home in Newry.
She has well and truly taken on the Christmas baton, putting a tree up in her room in September.
Indeed the 34-year-old loves Christmas so much, she had Santa and his reindeer tattooed on her leg this year.
Tim Hancock lives and breathes Christmas.
When the 21-year-old is not studying business at the University of Ulster, he is thinking about blow moulds and pixel mega trees.
Blow moulds are basically plastic figures with lights in them and most Christmas fans would have one or two of them.
Tim owns 300.
They are not all on display at his family home's in Tandragee, as he changes the set-up every year.
364-day hobby
His father started the collection in 1999 but the "turning point" for Tim came in 2011 when he watched a documentary on Christmas displays and got in touch with the people who featured in it.
He started a Facebook group for display owners in the UK and opened Tim's Lights to the community - there's no entry fee but people are asked to give a donation to charity.
About 60 people came to the switch-on in November.
"I never imagined we would be at the scale we have reached now," he said.
"For me it's more about the Nativity (the birth of Jesus Christ) - the real reason of Christmas - and the charity."
He was programming the pixel trees from mid-April and starting putting the display together in September.
"If it's not at the forefront of my mind, it's always in the back of it," he said.
However, like Santa, Tim puts his feet up and switches off for the big day itself - before starting on his designs for Christmas 2020.
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Priorities, priorities. | By Toby MasonBBC Wales political unit
Finance Minister Jane Hutt has spent the last few months pondering how to slice up a shrinking cake, and on she has now unveiled the results.
Two contradictions lie at the heart of the Welsh Government draft budget she published.
Heavily trailed as a "budget for jobs and growth" it actually cuts spending for the Department for Business and Enterprise.
At the same time, Labour has pledged to protect the NHS in Wales - but has given it below-inflation increases over the coming years, despite some extra cash.
In reality, Ms Hutt had precious little room for manoeuvre, and she has chosen to play it safe, deciding against making substantial changes from existing spending plans.
Unexpected emergencies
In fact, it was later confirmed that all the additional cash for health and education had been found from reserves - the pot of cash the government holds on to for unexpected emergencies.
These could range from a severe flu pandemic to an outbreak of foot and mouth disease.
And while the minister was keen to trumpet the additional spending, she has left reserves at an eyebrow-raising low rate - just £127m or 0.95% of the total budget.
Pressed on the first contradiction - a budget for jobs and growth and a cut to the enterprise budget, Ms Hutt said her colleague, Business Minister Edwina Hart, would claim that it is not the size of her budget that was necessarily a driver for growth, but how smartly it is spent.
Alongside that, she argued, that deep cuts to public expenditure on health or education, for example, would scarcely bring growth to the Welsh economy either. So it is a priority to maintain spending on them.
So in a sense, she had her cake and ate it.
But none of the three opposition parties chose to back her plans in the chamber. There will now be six weeks of negotiations before a final vote on 6 December, where Ms Hutt must convince at least one of the three other parties to vote for her plans.
One notable feature was that she was in no hurry whatsoever to announce what she will do with the £40m extra given to them by the UK government as a result of the council tax freeze in England.
That will come in very handy when the opposition parties arrive at her door in the coming days with their votes in one hand - and a shopping list in the other.
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We know the warnings by now. | By Imran Rahman-JonesNewsbeat reporter
2019 is on course to be in the top three warmest years on record.
The UK government has declared a national climate emergency.
And now, UN Secretary General António Guterres says the "point of no return is no longer over the horizon".
That came ahead of the UN's two-week gathering of countries to discuss climate change and set targets - the 25th Conference of the Parties (COP25).
So what really gets done at these conferences - and do they actually work?
Many countries have individual targets related to climate change.
For example, the UK government has committed to cutting greenhouse gas emissions right down to net-zero by 2050.
But there are also worldwide targets for countries which take part in the UN climate change summits.
The Montreal Protocol, adopted in 1987, was an international agreement to try to heal the ozone layer, which protects Earth from ultraviolet rays but was being destroyed by man-made chemicals.
By last year it was found to be successfully healing - the Northern Hemisphere could be fully fixed by the 2030s and Antarctica by the 2060s, according to a UN report.
The COP meetings - which focus on greenhouse gases - started in 1995. But it was 1997 when the first significant targets were set.
The Kyoto Protocol
The Kyoto Protocol, agreed in Japan in 1997, set targets for 37 countries to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
The targets were different for each country, depending on how developed they were.
But the US pulled out in 2001 - because they were unhappy that developed countries had legally binding targets, while less developed nations didn't have binding targets.
Canada pulled out in 2011 and a lot of other countries missed their targets.
In 2012, the Kyoto Protocol was updated in Doha, Qatar.
But the deal only covered Europe and Australia, whose share of world greenhouse gas emissions was less than 15%.
However, it paved the way for the Paris Agreement in 2015 - also known as COP21 - which was another significant step in climate change talks.
The Paris Agreement
The Paris Agreement went further than any other international climate change deal.
It was agreed by 195 countries in 2015 and came into force in November 2016.
Some of the main pledges were:
One of the main differences to the Paris deal was that it allowed countries to submit their own targets - rather than tell countries what their targets were.
This got the US and Canada back on board.
But since then, the US has started to withdraw from the agreement, as President Trump says it's unfair on the US economy.
He has said he wants to make it easier for fossil fuel producers in the US.
But there's an election in the US in November 2020, and a different president could cancel the withdrawal.
Do the talks actually work?
Although the Paris Agreement was generally well-received, the UN itself has said it doesn't go far enough.
A report from the UN Environment Programme in 2017 says the Paris Agreement only covers a third of the emission reductions needed.
It says that the world is still on course to warm by more than 2C.
The report recommends putting more ambitious targets in place in 2020.
Next year's targets are what's expected to be discussed at this year's COP25 in Madrid.
The 2020 summit will be held in Glasgow and countries have committed to submit new and updated national climate action plans.
The UN Secretary General António Guterres will tell the meeting that the world is now facing a full-blown climate emergency.
He said before the conference: "In the crucial 12 months ahead, it is essential that we secure more ambitious national commitments - particularly from the main emitters - to immediately start reducing greenhouse gas emissions at a pace consistent to reaching carbon neutrality by 2050."
It could be seen as an acknowledgement that while the climate change summits can be a step towards a better future, more needs to be done - and time is running out.
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A chronology of key events:
| 1906 - Muslim League founded as forum for Indian Muslim separatism.
1940 - Muslim League endorses idea of separate state for India's Muslims.
1947 - Muslim state of East and West Pakistan created out of partition of India at the end of British rule. Hundreds of thousands die in widespread communal violence, and millions are made homeless.
1948 - Muhammed Ali Jinnah, founding leader of Pakistan, dies. First war with India over disputed territory of Kashmir.
Military rule
1951 - Jinnah's successor Liaquat Ali Khan is assassinated.
1956 - Constitution proclaims Pakistan an Islamic republic.
1958 - Martial law declared and General Ayyub Khan takes over.
War and secession
1965 - Second war with India over Kashmir.
1969 - General Ayyub Khan resigns and General Yahya Khan takes over.
1970 - Victory in East Pakistan election for breakaway Awami League, leading to rising tension with West Pakistan.
1971 - East Pakistan attempts to secede, leading to civil war. India intervenes in support of East Pakistan, which eventually breaks away to become Bangladesh.
1972 - Simla peace agreement with India sets new frontline in Kashmir.
1973 - Populist Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto becomes prime minister.
Zia takes charge
1977 - Riots erupt over allegations of vote-rigging by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party (PPP). General Zia ul-Haq launches military coup.
1978 - General Zia becomes president, ushers in Islamic legal system.
1979 - Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto hanged amid international protests.
1980 - US pledges military assistance to Pakistan following Soviet intervention in Afghanistan.
1985 - Martial law and political parties ban lifted.
1986 - Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto's daughter Benazir returns from exile to lead PPP in campaign for fresh elections.
1988 August - General Zia, US ambassador, and top army brass die in air crash.
Bhutto comeback
1988 November - Benazir Bhutto's PPP wins general election.
1990 - Benazir Bhutto dismissed as prime minister on charges of incompetence and corruption.
1991 - Conservative Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif begins economic liberalisation programme. Islamic Sharia law formally incorporated into legal code.
1992 - Government launches campaign to stamp out violence by Urdu-speaking supporters of the Mohajir Quami Movement.
1993 - Prime Minister Sharif resigns under pressure from military. General election brings Benazir Bhutto back to power.
Nuclear tests
1996 - President Leghari dismisses Bhutto government amid corruption allegations.
1997 - Nawaz Sharif returns as prime minister after Muslim League wins elections.
1998 - Pakistan conducts its own nuclear tests after India explodes several nuclear devices.
1999 April - Benazir Bhutto and husband convicted of corruption and given jail sentences. Ms Bhutto stays out of the country.
1999 May - Kargil conflict: Pakistan-backed forces clash with the Indian military in the icy heights around Kargil in Indian-held Kashmir. More than 1,000 people are killed on both sides.
Musharraf coup
1999 October - General Pervez Musharraf seizes power in coup.
2000 April - Nawaz Sharif sentenced to life imprisonment on hijacking and terrorism charges over his actions to prevent the 1999 coup. Goes into exile in Saudi Arabia later in the year after being pardoned by military authorities.
2001 June - Gen Musharraf names himself president while remaining head of the army.
2001 September - President Musharraf backs the US in its fight against terrorism and supports attacks on the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. US lifts some sanctions imposed after Pakistan's nuclear tests in 1998.
2002 January - President Musharraf bans two militant groups - Lashkar-e-Toiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad - and takes steps to curb religious extremism.
2002 April - President Musharraf wins another five years in office in a controversial referendum.
Thaw with India
2003 November - Pakistan declares a Kashmir ceasefire; India follows suit.
2003 December - Pakistan and India agree to resume direct air links and to allow overflights of each other's planes from beginning of 2004, after a two-year ban.
2004 February - Nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan admits to having leaked nuclear weapons secrets, reportedly to Libya, North Korea and Iran.
2004 June - Pakistan mounts first military offensive against suspected al-Qaeda militants and their supporters in tribal areas near Afghan border. US begins using drone strikes to target al-Qaeda leaders in the area.
2004 April - Parliament approves creation of military-led National Security Council, institutionalising role of armed forces in civilian affairs.
2005 April - Bus services, the first in 60 years, operate between Muzaffarabad in Pakistani-administered Kashmir and Srinagar in Indian-controlled Kashmir.
2005 August - Pakistan tests its first nuclear-capable cruise missile.
Kashmir quake
2005 October - Earthquake kills tens of thousands of people in Pakistani-administered Kashmir.
2007 February - Pakistan and India sign an agreement aimed at reducing the risk of accidental nuclear war.
Musharraf targets judiciary
2007 March - President Musharraf suspends Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry, triggering a wave of protests across the country.
2007 July - Security forces storm the jihadist-occupied Red Mosque complex in Islamabad following a week-long siege.
Supreme Court reinstates Chief Justice Chaudhry.
2007 October - Ex-prime minister Benazir Bhutto returns from exile. Dozens of people die in a suicide bomb targeting her homecoming parade in Karachi.
2007 October-November - Musharraf wins presidential election but is challenged by Supreme Court. He declares emergency rule, dismisses Chief Justice Chaudhry and appoints new Supreme Court, which confirms his re-election.
2007 November - Former prime minister Nawaz Sharif returns from exile.
Bhutto killed, Musharraf resigns
2007 December - Benazir Bhutto assassinated at political rally at election campaign rally in Rawalpindi.
2008 February-March - Pakistan People's Party (PPP) nominee Yusuf Raza Gilani becomes PM at head of coalition with Nawaz Sharif's Muslim League party following parliamentary elections in February.
2008 August - President Musharraf resigns after the two main governing parties agree to launch impeachment proceedings against him.
Nawaz Sharif pulls his PML-N out of the coalition, accusing the PPP of breaking its promise to reinstate all judges sacked by President Musharraf.
2008 September - MPs elect Pakistan People's Party's (PPP) Asif Ali Zardari - the widower of assassinated former PM Benazir Bhutto - president.
Suicide bombing on Marriott Hotel in Islamabad kills 53 people. Soon after, government launches major offensive in Bajaur tribal area, killing more than 1,000 militants.
2008 November - The government borrows billions of dollars from the International Monetary Fund to overcome its spiralling debt crisis.
Tribal areas turmoil
2008 December - India blames Mumbai attacks in November on Pakistani-based militants, and demands Pakistan take action. Islamabad denies involvement but promises to co-operate with the Indian investigation.
2009 March - After days of protests, government yields to demands for reinstatement of judges dismissed by former President Musharraf.
2009 August - The leader of Pakistan's Taliban, Baitullah Mehsud, is killed in US drone attack in South Waziristan. He is succeeded by Hakimullah Mehsud.
Suicide bombing in northwestern city of Peshawar kills 120 people.
Reform efforts
2010 April - Parliament approves package of wide-ranging constitutional reforms. Measures include transferring key powers from president to prime minister.
2010 August - Worst floods in 80 years kill at least 1,600 people and affect more than 20 million. Government response widely criticised.
2011 January - A campaign to reform Pakistan's blasphemy law leads to the killing of two prominent supporters, Punjab Governor Salman Taseer in January, and Minorities Minister Shahbaz Bhatti in March.
2011 May - The founder of al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, is killed by American special forces in Abbottabad.
"Memogate"
2011 December - Government comes under pressure over a leaked memo alleging senior officials sought US aid against a military coup after the killing of Osama bin Laden in April.
2012 January - Amid growing tension between government and military over "memogate" scandal, army chief Gen Pervez Kayani warns of "unpredictable consequences" after PM Yousuf Raza Gilani criticises army leaders and sacks top defence official.
2012 May - A US Senate panel cuts $33m in aid to Pakistan over the jailing of Pakistani doctor Shakil Afridi who helped the CIA find Osama Bin Laden.
2012 June - Supreme Court disqualifies Prime Minister Gilani from holding office after he declines to appeal against a token sentence in President Zardari corruption row. Parliament approves Water and Power Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf as his successor.
2012 July - Pakistan agrees to reopen Nato supply routes to Afghanistan after the US apologises for killing Pakistani soldiers in November.
Sunni extremist violence increases
2012 September - Muslim cleric Khalid Chishti is arrested on suspicion of planting burnt pages of the Koran on a Christian girl briefly detained for blasphemy. Amid widespread condemnation of the case against the girl at home and abroad, a court dropped it November.
2012 October - Taliban gunmen seriously injure 14-year-old campaigner for girls' rights Malala Yousafzai, whom they accused of "promoting secularism". The shooting sparked a brief upsurge of anger in Pakistan against the militants.
2012 November - Taliban suicide bomber kills at least 23 people at a Shia Muslim procession in the Rawalpindi.
2013 June - Parliament approves Nawaz Sharif as prime minister after his Muslim League-N wins parliamentary elections in May.
2014 June - A deadly assault on Karachi's international airport leaves dozens dead. Uzbek militants fighting with the Pakistani Taliban say they carried out the attack. Peace talks with the Taliban collapse and the army launches a major offensive on Islamist hideouts in north-west Pakistan.
2014 October - Teenager Malala Yousafzai, who was shot in the head by the Taliban but survived to become a campaigner for girls' education, becomes the youngest person ever to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
Peshawar school attack
2014 December - Taliban kills nearly 150 people - mostly children - in an attack on a school in Peshawar.
Government responds to the massacre by lifting a moratorium on the death penalty and launching round-up of terror suspects, although critics complain major terror organisers are left alone.
2015 April - India protests over Pakistan court release on bail of suspected mastermind of 2008 Mumbai terror attacks, Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi. Human rights activist Sabeen Mehmud shot dead in Karachi.
2015 April - China and Pakistan sign agreements worth billions of dollars to boost infrastructure. They are designed to end Pakistan's chronic energy crisis and transform the country into a regional economic hub.
2015 June - Pakistan acknowledges that eight out of ten Taliban members allegedly jailed for the gun attack on teenage education activist and Nobel Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai were secretly acquitted at their trial in April.
2016 November - Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa is named as new army chief. The position is arguably the most powerful in the country.
2017 February - The Islamic State group takes responsibility for a suicide bombing at a major Sufi shrine in Sindh which killed nearly 90 people. Pakistan closes border with Afghanistan.
2017 March - Parliament passes a law allowing the country's Hindu minority to register their marriages for the first time since partition from India in 1947.
Rise of Imran Khan
2017 August - Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is forced to resign after being disqualified by the Supreme Court over corruption charges. He is convicted and given a jail sentence.
2018 August - Former international cricket star Imran Khan becomes prime minister on a pledge to end corruption and dynastic politics, after his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) becomes the largest party in the July general election.
2018 November - Asia Bibi, a Christian woman acquitted of blasphemy after eight years on death row, is freed from prison, prompting violent protests by Islamists.
2019 February - Clashes with India follow an attack by the Pakistan-based Jaish-e Mohammad jihadist group on security forces' convoy in Indian-controlled Kashmir.
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"Nothing's been easy here. | "Maybe I miss the sound of the waterfall, but I'm glad it's gone, otherwise I would be terrified it would happen again."
When flash floods washed away Ray and Diann Scriven's garden five years ago, in Alveley, Shropshire, it put at risk a house built with their own hands, more than 40 years earlier.
The same floods washed away a road two miles away in Hampton Loade, isolating 50 people, and caused a landslide on a nearby section of the Severn Valley Railway, leaving tracks suspended in mid air.
Since then, about £10m has been spent by the Environment Agency in Worcestershire and Shropshire on flood alleviation projects.
Set on the site of a former paper mill, Mr and Mrs Scriven's home featured a brook and a 250-year-old waterfall, which once powered the mill.
"I grew up in the village and used to come here as a girl. I think I was drawn here by the water. I used to tell my mother that one day I'd live at the old paper mill," Mrs Scriven said.
Normally placid and picturesque, on the night of 19 June 2007, two weeks' worth of rain fell within 45 minutes. Local firefighters dealt with 136 calls overnight.
"We were were out at the time. We were babysitting for our eldest daughter. We'd heard a bit of rain, but didn't realise it was so bad," Mrs Scriven said.
The 15-mile journey home took two hours.
When the couple got back, the brook was "a mass of water" and the waterfall itself had been destroyed.
New house
In the early hours of the morning, Mrs Scriven woke up to find the water level had dropped, taking with it a patio area and threatening to tear their conservatory away from the house.
The home, named Ravine Falls, was left "teetering on the brink" of a gorge some 15ft (4.6 metres) deep.
Emergency attempts to secure it with 10 tonnes of concrete failed as it too was washed away.
It took 12 months for repair work to start and another year to complete.
"We were told it would be cheaper to build a completely new house, but we wouldn't want to live anywhere else," Mr Scriven said.
The repairs cost about £220,000, which was covered by their insurance.
The couple described it as a "once in a lifetime" flood and said the defences put in place by insurers meant they now felt safe.
'Flooded 12 times'
According to Worcestershire flood consultant Mary Dhonau insurers are likely to be less generous in future.
A deal between insurers and the government currently means high-risk homes are covered, while the Department for Environment and Rural Affairs (Defra) funds flood protection schemes.
The agreement is due to end in June 2013 and, despite ongoing talks, a new deal has yet to be reached.
In Shropshire alone, nearly 5,000 homes are at risk of a one in 100 years flood, according to the Environment Agency.
Across the UK, some 5.5 million people live with the risk of flooding, Ms Dhonau said.
Living down-river in Worcester, her own house was affected by flooding in 2007, which saw raw sewage floating around her living room.
"I've been flooded 12 times, but by 2007 I'd made my house more resilient and I was back in it within three weeks," she said.
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A chronology of key events
| 1st century BC - Central Asia, including present-day Uzbekistan, forms an important part of the overland trade routes known as the Great Silk Road linking China with the Middle East and imperial Rome.
7th-8th centuries - Arabs conquer the area and convert its inhabitants to Islam.
9th-10th centuries - Persian Samanid dynasty becomes dominant and develops Bukhara as important centre of Islamic culture. As it declines, Turkic hordes compete to fill the vacuum.
13th-14th centuries - Central Asia conquered by Genghis Khan, and becomes part of Mongol empire.
14th century - Mongol-Turkic ruler Tamerlane establishes empire with Samarkand as its capital.
18th-19th centuries - Rise of independent Uzbek states of Bukhara, Kokand and Samarkand.
Russian influence
1865-76 - Russians take Tashkent and make it the capital of its Turkestan Province, incorporating vast areas of Central Asia. They also make Bukhara and Khiva protectorates and annex Kokand.
1917-1920 - Bolsheviks gradually conquer Turkestan, Bukhara and Khiva.
1918-22 - New Communist rulers close down mosques and persecute Muslim clergy as part of secularisation campaign.
1921-24 - Reorganisation of Soviet member-states results in the creation of Uzbekistan and its neighbours.
Resettlement of minorities
1930s - Soviet leader Stalin purges independent-minded Uzbek leaders, replacing them with Moscow loyalists.
1950s-80s - Cotton production boosted by major irrigation projects which, however, contribute to the drying up of the Aral Sea.
1966 - Devastating earthquake destroys much of capital Tashkent.
1970s-1980s - Uzbek Communist chief Sharaf Rashidov ensures the promotion of ethnic Uzbek over Russian officials. He falsifies cotton harvest figures in scandal exposed under Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's policy of glasnost.
1989 - Islam Karimov becomes leader of Uzbek Communist Party.
Violent attacks take place against Meskhetian Turks and other minorities in the Fergana Valley. Nationalist movement Birlik founded.
Independence
1990 - Communist Party of Uzbekistan declares economic and political sovereignty. Islam Karimov becomes president.
1991 - President Karimov initially supports the attempted anti-Gorbachev coup by conservatives in Moscow. Uzbekistan declares independence and, following the collapse of the USSR, joins the Commonwealth of Independent States.
Mr Karimov returned as president in direct elections in which few opposition groups are allowed to field candidates.
1992 - President Karimov bans the Birlik and Erk opposition parties, whose members are arrested in large numbers.
1995 - Referendum extends Mr Karimov's term of office for another five years.
Islamist attacks
1999 - Bombs in Tashkent kill more than a dozen people. President blames Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), which conducts summer skirmishes with government forces for several years.
2001 June - Uzbekistan, China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan launch Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) to tackle ethnic and Islamic extremism and promote trade and investment.
2001 October - Uzbekistan allows US to use its air bases for action in Afghanistan against the Taliban.
2002 January - President Karimov wins support for extending the presidential term from five to seven years in a referendum criticised as a ploy to hang on to power.
2002 March - President Karimov visits US. Strategic partnership agreement signed.
2001 November - IMU military leader Juma Namangani killed.
2003 December - President Karimov sacks long-standing prime minister Otkir Sultanov, citing country's poorest-ever cotton harvest. Shavkat Mirziyoyev replaces him.
Civil unrest
2004 March - At least 47 people killed in shootings and bombings. Authorities blame Islamic extremists.
2004 April - European Bank for Reconstruction and Development slashes aid because of Uzbekistan's poor record on economic reform and human rights.
2004 July - Suicide bombers target US and Israeli embassies in Tashkent, and third blast hits prosecutor-general's office.
2004 November - Restrictions on market traders spark civil disorder in eastern city of Kokand. Thousands take part in street protests.
Andijan killings
2005 May - Troops open fire on anti-government protests in the eastern city of Andijan, killing hundreds of demonstrators. 2005 August - In reaction to US condemnation of Andijan killings, government orders US forces to lave Khanabad air base used for the anti-Taliban campaign in Afghanistan.
2005 November - Supreme Court convicts 15 men of having organised the Andijan unrest and jails them for 14-20 years in trial with little legal credibility.
Agreement signed on closer military cooperation with Russia, signalling move away from alliance with USA.
2006 March - Government critics Sanjar Umarov and Mukhtabar Tojibayeva jailed for eight years on trumped-up ecnomic charges after condemning Andijan killings.
Sanctions eased
2007 August - EU begins easing the sanctions imposed following the crushing of the Andijan unrest.
2008 March - Uzbekistan allows US limited use of its southern Termez air base for operations in Afghanistan, partially reversing its decision to expel US forces from the Khanabad base in 2005.
2009 February - President Karimov confirms that the US will be allowed to transport supplies through Uzbekistan to troops in Afghanistan.
2009 October - The EU lifts the arms embargo that it imposed in 2005 after the Andijan violence.
Tension with neighbours
2009 December - Uzbekistan announces plans to withdraw from a Soviet-era power grid having set up new power lines for its own use. Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, the poorest nations in the region, rely heavily on gas and electricity supplies sent through the grid and face shortages.
2010 June - Uzbekistan briefly accommodates ethnic Uzbek refugees fleeing communal violence in neighbouring Kyrgyzstan. Closes refugee camps within weeks and forces inhabitants back across border.
2012 June - Government announces plans to sell off hundreds of state assets in a drive to expand the private sector.
Uzbekistan agrees to allow NATO to move its military vehicles and equipment through its territory as NATO-led forces speed up their withdrawal from Afghanistan.
End of Karimov era
2012 September - Government strips largest mobile phone operator, Russian-owned Uzdunrobita, of its license to operate and arrests several managers. Swiss police begin a related money-laundering investigation that eventually involves President Karimov's elder daughter, Gulnara.
2013 October - The authorities begin closing down businesses and organisations linked to Gulnara Karimova, who responds by using Twitter to attack rivals in the Uzbek power structure.
2014 January - Swiss prosecutors begin to investigate Gulnara Karimova in a money-laundering probe.
2014 February - Gulnara Karimova is placed under house arrest.
2014 September - Uzbek prosecutors say Gulnara Karimova has been charged with belonging to a crime group that plundered £40bn ($65bn) in assets.
2016 September - President Karimov dies.
2016 December - Prime Minister Shavkat Mirziyoyev wins presidential election against token candidates, and sets out to repair relations with neighbouring states, Russia, China and the USA, to open up economy, a relax some of his predecessor's more repressive policies.
2017 February - President Mirziyoyev allows commercial flights to Tajikistan for first time in more than 20 years.
2017 June - Mr Mirziyoyev dismisses key rival Rustam Asimov from the post of first deputy prime minister.2018 January - Powerful and long-serving security chief Rustam Inoyatov is sidelined, marking the culmination of the replacement of senior Karimov-era aides.
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A chronology of key events:
| 1917 - Britain conquers Palestine from Ottomans. Gives support to "national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine through the Balfour Declaration, along with an insistence that "nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities".
1918 - First significant Palestinian Arab nationalist organisations emerge - the mainly cultural Muntada al-Adabi and the Damascus-based Nadi al-Arabi.
1920 - San Remo Allied Powers conference grants Palestine to Britain as a mandate, to prepare it for self-rule. Jerusalem riots against Balfour Declaration assert distinct Palestinian Arab identity.
1921 - Britain appoints Mohammed Amin al-Husseini, a member of a leading Palestinian Arab family, as Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and leader of the Muslim community. He rallies the Arabs and Muslims against any further concessions to the Jews.
1922 - Palestinian Arab delegation rejects British proposal for Legislative Council, saying inclusion of terms of the Balfour Declaration in draft constitution not acceptable.
1929 - Arab rioters kill about 200 Jews in Jerusalem's Old City and Hebron. British troops kill 116 Arabs in suppression of riots in Jerusalem.
1930 - British White Paper and Royal Commission recommend limiting Jewish immigration.
1930-35 - The Black Hand Islamist group led by Sheikh Izz al-Din al-Qassam launches campaign of violence against Jewish community and British rule.
1935 - Palestinian Arab leadership accepts British High Commissioner's proposal for Legislative Assembly, but the British House of Commons rejects it the following year.
1936-39 - Arab revolt begins with a general strike in Jaffa. Britain declares martial law and dissolves Grand Mufti Al-Husseini's Arab Higher Committee. More than 5,000 Arabs killed and 15,000 injured in suppression of revolt, Al-Husseini flees to French-run Syria to avoid arrest.
1947 - United Nations recommends partition of Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states after Britain signals end to Mandate, with international control over Jerusalem and its environs. Arab High Committee rejects partition.
Birth of Israel
1948 - Israel declares independence as British mandate ends.
Arab armies fail to defeat new Jewish state of Israel after Britain withdraws. Jordan occupies West Bank and East Jerusalem, Egypt occupies Gaza, and Israel holds the rest of Mandate Palestine including West Jerusalem.
At least 750,000 Palestinian Arabs either flee or are expelled. Disputes over the nature of their departure endure to this day.
United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) set up to cater to the educational and health needs of Palestinian refugees and their descendants throughout the Middle East.
1949-1950s - Fedayeen Palestinian guerrillas based in Egypt and Gaza carry out raids into Israel with Egyptian encouragement. This increases after pan-Arab officers seize power in Cairo in 1952.
1956-1957 - Israel colludes with Britain and France to invade Egypt during the Suez Crisis, partly to end Fedayeen incursions. UN buffer force in Sinai and Gaza drastically reduces raids.
1959 - Yasser Arafat forms Fatah fighting group in Egypt to carry out raids into Israel.
1964 - Arab League sets up Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and Palestine Liberation Army under Ahmad Shukeiri.
1967 June - Six-Day War leaves Israel occupying East Jerusalem, all of West Bank, Gaza, Golan Heights and Sinai. Jewish settlements are set up in all of these areas in coming years, with government approval.
1969 - Yasser Arafat takes over PLO leadership after debut as military leader in clashes with Israeli forces in Jordan in 1968, and asserts the group's independence from Egyptian control.
1970 - Increasing tension over the strength of the PLO in Jordan leads to the Black September clashes with Jordanian forces, driving the PLO into exile in southern Lebanon.
1970s-1980s - PLO and other armed Palestinian groups turn to airline hijackings and attacks on Israeli soldiers, officials and civilians within Israel and abroad to highlight their cause.
1972 - Palestinian "Black September" gunmen take the Israeli team hostage at the Munich Olympics. Two of the athletes are murdered at the site and nine more killed during a failed rescue attempt by the German authorities. Israel launches a series of reprisal assassinations.
1973 - Israel raids PLO bases in Beirut and southern Lebanon before and during the October Yom Kippur/Ramadan War.
1974 April-May - Two hardline factions, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command and Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, carry out raids into northern Israel and kill 43 civilians, including many children, in a block of flats in Kiryat Shmona and a school in Maalot.
1974 June - After 1973 Yom Kippur/Ramada war, PLO adopts Ten-Point Programme allowing compromise with Israel on the way to establishing complete Palestinian control over historic Palestine, including the territory of Israel.
Some hardline factions split away to form the Rejectionist Front and step up attacks on Israeli soldiers and civilians.
PLO recognised
1974 October - Arab League recognises PLO as the "sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people'' and it admits it to full membership of the League.
1974 November - Yasser Arafat becomes first non-state leader to address the United Nations General Assembly, delivers "olive branch... and freedom fighter's gun" speech.
1975 - Rejectionist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and German far-left armed group hijack Air France plane en route from Israel to France, divert it to Entebbe in Uganda. Israel commandos rescue most of passengers and crew, kill hijackers.
1977 May - The right-wing Likud party wins surprise election victory in Israel and encourages settlements policy on West Bank and Gaza.
1978 March - PLO attack kills 38 civilians on Israel's coastal road. Israel carries out first major incursion into southern Lebanon, driving PLO and other Palestinian groups out of the area.
1978 September - Israel pledges to expand Palestinian self-government in the West Bank and Gaza as part of the Camp David Accords establishing diplomatic relations with Egypt.
1982 June - Israel invades Lebanon again to expel PLO leadership from Beirut after assassination attempt by Palestinian faction on Israeli ambassador to London.
PLO leaders quit Lebanon
1982 September - Massacre of Palestinians in the Beirut Sabra and Shatila camps by Israel's Christian Phalangist allies.
PLO leadership moves to Tunisia, where it remains until it moves to Gaza in 1994.
1985 October - Israeli air force strikes PLO headquarters in Tunis after PLO group kills three Israeli tourists on a yacht. Palestine Liberation Front PLO faction hijacks Achille Lauro cruise ship, demanding release of 50 Palestinians from Israeli prisons. Hijackers kill elderly American wheelchair user Leon Klinghoffer.
1987 December - First Palestinian Intifada uprising begins in Palestinian Territories. Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza forms the Hamas movement, which rapidly turns to violence against Israel.
1988 Jordan abandons claim to West Bank, ceding it to PLO. Palestinian National Council meeting in Algiers proclaims State of Palestine.
1990 - PLO backs Iraq over its annexation of Kuwait, which severs ties with the PLO and subsequently expels about 400,000 Palestinians.
1991 October - US-Soviet sponsored conference in Madrid brings Israeli and Palestinian representatives together for the first time since 1949.
1992 - Israeli Labour government of Yitzhak Rabin pledges to halt settlement expansion programme and begins secret talks with PLO.
1993 September - Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat sign Oslo Declaration to plot Palestinian self-government and formally end the First Intifada, which had been running out of steam since the Madrid Conference. Violence by various Palestinian groups that reject the Oslo Declaration continues.
1994 February - Baruch Goldstein of the extremist Jewish Kach movement kills 29 Palestinians at prayer at the Cave of the Patriarchs shrine in Hebron on the West Bank.
Progress towards self-rule
1992 May-July - Israel withdraws from most of Gaza and the West Bank city of Jericho, allowing Yasser Arafat to move his PLO administration from Tunis and set up the Palestinian National Authority.
1992 December - Yasser Arafat, along with Yitzhak Rabin and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, are jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
1995 - Interim Agreement sets out path for transfer of further power and territory to Palestinian National Authority. Forms basis of 1997 Hebron Protocol, Wye River Memorandum of 1998 and internationally-sponsored "Road Map for Peace" of 2003.
2000-2001 - Talks between Israeli Labour Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat break down over the timing and extent of a proposed further Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank. Palestinian protests escalate into new Intifada.
2001 December - Israel sends troops to encircle Ramallah after series of deadly Palestinian attacks inside Israel. Yasser Arafat is unable to leave his government compound.
Barrier goes up
2002 March - Israeli army launches Operation Defensive Shield on the West Bank and begins building barrier there to stop armed Palestinian entering Israel. The route of the barrier is controversial as it frequently deviates from the pre-1967 ceasefire line into the West Bank.
2002 March - Arab League meeting in Beirut offers to recognise Israel in return for its full withdrawal from all territories occupied since 1967, agreement to a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital and "fair solution" to refugee question - the "Arab League Peace Plan".
2003 March - Yasser Arafat establishes post of prime minister and appoints Fatah veteran Mahmoud Abbas to lead contacts with US and Israel, both of which refuse to deal with Arafat.
2003 May - Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon says the occupation of Palestinian territories cannot continue indefinitely.
2003 June - Arab League meeting in Egypt expresses support for "road map" proposed by US, European Union, Russia and UN and accepted by Palestinian National Authority and Israel, positing an independent Palestinian state and a freeze on West Bank Jewish settlements.
2003 September - Mahmoud Abbas resigns as prime minister, citing US and Israeli intransigence as well as internal Palestinian opposition to his government. Succeeded by Fatah veteran Ahmed Qurei.
2004 March - Israeli forces kill Sheikh Yassin, the founder and leader of Hamas, and his successor Abd al-Aziz al-Rantissi, the following month.
2004 July - International Court of Justice issues advisory opinion that the Israeli separation barrier violates international law and must be removed.
2004 November - Yasser Arafat dies in hospital in France, where he went for urgent medical treatment in October.
2005 January - Mahmoud Abbas elected Mr Arafat's successor as head of the Palestinian National Authority.
2005 September - Israel withdraws all Jewish settlements and military personnel from Gaza, while retaining control over airspace, ports and border crossings.
Hamas wins elections
2006 March - Hamas Islamist group's Ismail Haniyeh forms government after winning parliamentary elections in January. Struggle for primacy with Fatah begins. United States and European Union suspend aid, and Israel ends tax transfers, because of Hamas's refusal to recognise Israel, renounce violence and accept previous peace accords.
2006 June - Hamas militants from Gaza seize Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit near border crossing and hold him hostage for five years, demanding release of Palestinian prisoners. Major clashes between Israel and Hamas forces in Gaza follow. Israel imposes restrictions on Gaza.
2006 September - Clashes break out between Fatah and Hamas supporters in Gaza. Various Arab states and Palestinian groups seek to mediate between them in coming months in order to avert civil war.
2007 March - Fatah and Hamas form national unity government to end months of intermittent clashes in Gaza.
2007 June - Unity government founders. Hamas ousts Fatah from Gaza and reinforces its control of the territory. Israel tightens blockade after increase in rocket attacks from Gaza; Egypt closes border with Gaza.
Mahmoud Abbas appoints Salam Fayyad as prime minister, but Hamas refuses to recognise him. Two rival governments in West Bank and Gaza emerge. US and European Union resume aid to the Fayyad government.
2007 November - US-hosted Annapolis Conference for the first time establishes the "two-state solution" as the basis for future talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
2008 March - Efforts at reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas begin in Yemen, but next round in Cairo in November stalls when Hamas objects to Fatah arrest of its West Bank activists.
2008 November - Israel launches incursion into Gaza, seen by Hamas as a ceasefire violation. Hamas responds by launching rockets.
2008 December - Israel launches Operation Cast Lead month-long invasion of Gaza to stop Hamas and other militant groups firing rockets into Israel.
2010 February - Fatah and Hamas resume talks on national reconciliation.
Direct talks resume between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, only to falter over the question of settlements.
2010 May - Nine Turkish pro-Palestinian activists killed in Israeli capture of ships attempting to break maritime blockade of Gaza.
2011 April-May - Fatah and Hamas agree at talks in Cairo to reform a unity government and hold fresh elections, but no practical implementation follows.
Bid for UN membership
2011 - Palestinian National Authority launches campaign for UN membership of "State of Palestine", as means of highlighting stalled talks with Israel. Bid fails, but UNESCO cultural agency accepts Palestine as member in October.
2012 May - After preliminary talks in Qatar, Fatah and Hamas sign Cairo Agreement pledging to maintain non-violent resistance to Israeli occupation in pursuit of an independent state within the 1967 ceasefire lines.
2012 October - Local elections on West Bank undermine Fatah's position, as it wins only two-fifths of the seats contested on a turnout of 55%. Lists led by Fatah rebels win four of the 11 major towns and cities, and independents and leftists take control of a fifth. Hamas boycotts the poll and allows no elections in Gaza.
2012 November - UN upgrades Palestinian representation to that of "non-member observer state", allowing it to take part in General Assembly debates and improving chances of joining UN agencies.
2012 December - Fatah allows Hamas celebration rally on West Bank over UN status upgrade, a gesture reciprocated by Hamas in Gaza the following month.
2013 April - Prime Minister Fayyad resigns after long-standing dispute with Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. He is succeeded by academic Rami Hamdallah in May.
2013 Newly appointed US Secretary of State launches a series of Israeli-Palestinian talks aimed at reaching a framework peace deal by April 2014. Palestinian officials say continuing Israeli approval of Jewish housing in occupied East Jerusalem undermines progress. Israel accuses the Palestinians of incitement.
2013 July - Fall of Morsi government in Egypt dashes Palestinian hopes for lifting of Egyptian blockade of border with Gaza, and suspends Egyptian mediation in the Fatah-Hamas reconciliation process.
2013 December - Israel, Jordan and Palestinian Authority sign water-sharing pact to halt and eventually reverse the drying-out of the Dead Sea by laying pipeline to carry brine from Red Sea desalination plant while providing drinking water to region.
2014 March - Egypt bans Hamas activities and seizes its assets because of links to Egypt's illegal Muslim Brotherhood.
Reconciliation government
2014 April - Fatah and Hamas agree to form unity government, which takes office in June. Fatah complains that separate Hamas cabinet continues to rule Gaza.
2014 July-August - Israel responds to attacks from armed groups in Gaza with a military campaign by air and land to knock out missile launching sites and attack tunnels. Clashes end in uneasy Egyptian-brokered ceasefire in August.
2014 December - Minister Without Portfolio Ziad Abu Ein dies at clash with Israeli troops at West Bank protest.
2017 October - Hamas signs a reconciliation deal intended to administrative control of Gaza transferred to the Palestinian Authority, but disputes stalled the deal's implementation.
2017 December - US President Donald Trump recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, upsetting the Arab world and some Western allies.
2018 March - Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah visits Gaza, where his convoy survives a roadside bomb attack.
2018 July-August - UN and Egypt attempt to broker a long-term ceasefire between Israel and Hamas amid an upsurge in violence on the Gaza border from March.
2019 November - US says it no longer considers Israeli settlements on the West Bank to be illegal.
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A chronology of key events:
| 1523-24 - Spanish adventurer Pedro de Alvarado defeats the indigenous Maya and turns Guatemala into a Spanish colony.
1821 - Guatemala becomes independent and joins the Mexican empire the following year.
1823 - Guatemala becomes part of the United Provinces of Central America, which also include Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua.
1839 - Guatemala becomes fully independent.
1844-65 - Guatemala ruled by conservative dictator Rafael Carrera.
1873-85 - Guatemala ruled by liberal President Justo Rufino Barrios, who modernises the country, develops the army and introduces coffee growing.
1931 - Jorge Ubico becomes president; his tenure is marked by repressive rule and then by an improvement in the country's finances.
1941 - Guatemala declares war on the Axis powers.
Social-democratic reforms
1944 - Juan Jose Arevalo becomes president following the overthrow of Ubico and introduces social-democratic reforms, including setting up a social security system and redistributing land to landless peasants.
1951 - Colonel Jacobo Arbenz Guzman becomes president, continuing Arevalo's reforms.
1954 - Land reform stops with the accession to power of Colonel Carlos Castillo in a coup backed by the US and prompted by Arbenz's nationalisation of plantations of the United Fruit Company.
1960-1996 - Civil war pitting government against leftist rebels supported mainly by indigenous people.
1963 - Colonel Enrique Peralta becomes president following the assassination of Castillo.
1966 - Civilian rule restored; Cesar Mendez elected president.
1970 - Military-backed Carlos Arena elected president.
Human rights violated
1970s - Military rulers embark on a programme to eliminate left-wingers, resulting in at least 50,000 deaths.
1976 - 27,000 people are killed and more than a million rendered homeless by earthquake.
1980 January - Spanish embassy fire, a defining event in the civil war, in which 36 people die after police raid the embassy occupied by peasants.
1981 - Around 11,000 people are killed by death squads and soldiers in response to growing anti-government guerrilla activity.
1982 - General Efrain Rios Montt takes power in a military coup. He conducts a campaign of mass murder against indigenous Mayans, accusing them of harbouring insurgents. He faces trial over these crimes in 2013.
1983 - Montt ousted in coup led by General Mejia Victores, who declares an amnesty for guerrillas.
1985 - Marco Vinicio Cerezo Arevalo elected president and the Guatemalan Christian Democratic Party wins legislative elections under a new constitution.
1989 - Attempt to overthrow Cerezo fails; civil war toll since 1980 reaches 100,000 dead and 40,000 missing.
1991 - Jorge Serrano Elias elected president. Diplomatic relations restored with Belize, from whom Guatemala had long-standing territorial claims.
1993 - Serrano forced to resign after his attempt to impose an authoritarian regime ignites a wave of protests; Ramiro de Leon Carpio elected president by the legislature.
1994 - Peace talks between the government and rebels of the Guatemalan Revolutionary National Unity begin; right-wing parties win a majority in legislative elections.
1995 - Rebels declare a ceasefire; UN and US criticise Guatemala for widespread human rights abuses.
End of civil war
1996 - Alvaro Arzu is elected president, conducts a purge of senior military officers and signs a peace agreement with rebels, ending 36 years of civil war.
1998 - Bishop Juan Gerardi, a human rights campaigner, murdered.
1999 - UN-backed commission says security forces were behind 93% of all human rights atrocities committed during the civil war, which claimed 200,000 lives, and that senior officials had overseen 626 massacres in Maya villages.
2000 - Alfonso Portillo sworn in as president after winning elections in 1999.
2001 December - President Portillo pays $1.8m in compensation to the families of 226 men, women and children killed by soldiers and paramilitaries in the northern village of Las Dos Erres in 1982.
Border talks
2002 September - Guatemala and Belize agree on draft settlement to their long-standing border dispute at talks brokered by Organization of American States (OAS). Both nations will hold referendums on draft settlement.
2003 November - Presidential elections go to second round. Former military leader Efrain Rios Montt, trailing in third place, accepts defeat.
2003 December - Conservative businessman Oscar Berger - a former mayor of Guatemala City - wins the presidential election in the second round.
Guatemala - along with Nicaragua, El Salvador and Honduras - agrees on a free-trade agreement with the US.
2004 May - Former military leader Efrain Rios Montt is placed under house arrest.
2004 May/June - Major cuts to the army; bases are closed and 10,000 soldiers are retired.
2004 July - $3.5 million in damages paid to victims of civil war. Move follows state's formal admissions of guilt in several well-known human rights crimes.
2004 December - UN mission, set up to monitor post-civil war peace process, winds up, but the UN says Guatemala still suffers from crime, social injustice, human rights violations.
2005 March - Government ratifies Central American free trade deal with US amid street protests in capital.
2005 November - Guatemala's leading anti-drugs investigator is arrested in the US on charges of drug trafficking.
2006 July - A Spanish judge issues a warrant for the arrest of former military leader Efrain Rios Montt and other former officials over atrocities committed during the civil war.
2006 December - The government and the UN agree to create a commission - to be known as the CICIG - to identify and dismantle powerful clandestine armed groups.
2007 May - Guatemala ratifies an international adoption treaty, committing it to ensure that babies are not bought or stolen.
Murders
2007 July - Amnesty International urges the government to ratify the CICIG as a first step towards tackling the culture of impunity it says has contributed to Guatemala's soaring murder rate.
2007 August - International election monitors say they are worried about the high murder rate among political candidates and activists in the run-up to the 9 September polls.
2007 November - Alvaro Colom of centre-left National Unity of Hope Party wins presidential elections with nearly 53 percent of the vote.
2008 October - Ex-President Alfonso Portillo is extradited from Mexico to face corruption charges. A court later clears him.
2009 May - President Colom denies involvement in murder of a prominent lawyer who in a video made before to his death claimed Colom and others were out to kill him. A UN probe clears Mr Colom.
Trials
2009 September - An ex-paramilitary officer, Felipe Cusanero, becomes the first person to be jailed for the forced disappearance of civilians in Guatemala's civil war.
2009 December - Retired colonel becomes first army officer to be convicted of crimes committed during civil war.
2010 March - Country's police chief and anti-drugs tsar are sacked over the theft of cocaine.
2010 October - US apologises for deliberately infecting hundreds of Guatemalans with gonorrhoea and syphilis as part of medical tests in the 1940s.
2011 August - Four former soldiers found guilty of a village massacre become the first to be convicted of rights abuses during the civil war.
2011 November - Former army general Otto Perez Molina of the right-wing Patriotic Party wins presidential elections, takes office in January.
2011 December - President Colom apologises to the relatives of the more than 200 victims of the 1982 massacre in the village of Dos Erres during the civil war.
2012 March - President Perez Molina proposes decriminalising drugs as a way of combating the illegal narcotics trade.
2013 May - Ex-military leader Efrain Rios Montt is convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity, only to have the ruling overturned by the constitutional court on a technicality, forcing a retrial, although no date is set.
2014 March - Ex-President Alfonso Portillo pleads guilty in a US court to charges that he accepted $2.5m (£1.5m) in bribes from Taiwan in return for a promise of continued recognition by Guatemala.
2014 June - The US to give millions of dollars of aid to Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras to combat gang violence and help citizens repatriated from the US, as part of efforts to cope with growing migration.
2014 August - Armed forces chief Rudy Ortiz dies in a helicopter crash of unknown cause in bad weather near the border with Mexico.
2015 January - The retrial on genocide charges of Guatemala's ex-military ruler General Efrain Rios Montt is suspended, after his lawyers question the impartiality of the lead judge.
2015 August - A court rules that ex-military ruler General Efrain Rios Montt must face a retrial for genocide in January despite suffering from dementia, but he will not be tried in person or be sentenced if found guilty.
President Perez Molina resigns after Congress lifts his immunity in response to allegations by prosecutors of his involvement in a customs bribery ring.
Morales elected president
2015 October - Jimmy Morales wins presidential election.
2016 November - El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras announce a joint security force aimed at fighting gangs and cross-border organised crime.
2017 August - President Morales orders the expulsion of the head of the UN anti-corruption mission which backed calls by prosecutors for the removal of his political immunity.
2018 April - Guatemalans vote in a referendum in favour of referring a two-centuries-old border dispute with what is now Belize to the International Court of Justice.
2018 May - Guatemala becomes the second country after the US to move its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.
2019 July - The US and Guatemala sign a migration agreement, to require migrants from El Salvador and Honduras who pass through Guatemala to seek asylum there first. The US had threatened Guatemala with tariffs if it did not comply.
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Maths, science, history and death? | By Matt PicklesBBC News global education
This could be a school timetable in a state in Australia, if a proposal by the Australian Medical Association Queensland is accepted.
They want young people to be made more familiar with talking about the end of life.
Doctors say that improvements in medicine and an ageing population mean that there are rising numbers of families facing difficult questions about their elderly relatives and how they will face their last days.
But too often young people in the West are not prepared for talking about such difficult decisions. There is a taboo around the subject and most deaths happen out of sight in hospitals.
Pupils might have reservations about lessons in death education.
Dying days
But the Australian doctors argue that if the law and ethics around palliative care and euthanasia were taught in classrooms, it would make such issues less "traumatic" and help people to make better informed decisions.
Queensland GP Dr Richard Kidd says young people can find themselves having to make decisions about how relatives are treated in their dying days.
"I have seen people as young as 21 being thrust into the role of power of attorney," he says.
Their lack of knowledge makes it a steep learning curve in "how to do things in a way that is in the best interests of their loved ones and complies with the law", he says.
He says the taboo around death means that families usually avoid discussing until it is too late. Most people do not know how their relatives want to be treated if the worst happens.
"So we need to start preparing young people and getting them to have tough conversations with their loved ones," he says.
"Death lessons" could include the legal aspects of what mental and physical capacity means, how to draw up a will and an advanced care plan, and the biological processes of dying and death.
Part of the culture
These topics could be incorporated into existing subjects, such as biology, medicine, ethics and law.
Dr Kidd says education around death would help countries like Australia, the US and the UK follow the example of Mexico, where death is an important part of the culture and even celebrated in the Day of the Dead festival.
He gives the example of Ireland, where he says wakes held after a death can be "joyous occasions".
Introducing a culture of openly discussing death could even change where we die, according to Dr Kidd.
The vast majority of Australians die in hospital, even though many people say they would rather die at home with their family around them.
"Only 15% of people die at home but in the case of many more people, they could have died at home rather than hospital if there had only been a bit of preparation," says Dr Kidd.
Matter of life and death
A hundred years ago it was very normal for people to die at home. but modern medical technology allows life to be prolonged in hospital, even though the patient might not have great quality of life.
"People may decide that at a certain point they want to be able to die at home in comfort rather than being kept in hospital," he says.
The proposal for lessons in death has now been put to the Queensland education authorities and Dr Kidd hopes the message reaches other parts of the world.
"Our main aim is to get young people to start having those conversations with their parents and grandparents to learn more about how they want to die so that they know the answer when they need that information in the future," he says.
"It should be seen as a positive and proactive thing - information and knowledge can be really empowering to people."
So perhaps this is something to bring up over your next family Sunday lunch.
It might not be an easy conversation but it could be a matter of life and death.
More from Global education
The editor of Global education is [email protected]
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Now he's gone and done it. | Laura KuenssbergPolitical editor@bbclaurakon Twitter
For a long time it had been clear Boris Johnson was not happy with the prime minister's Brexit strategy.
His dissatisfaction was more than just the odd off-colour remark, although goodness knows there were enough of those.
His departure is a huge story and turns what might have been a couple of days of significant turmoil, into a significant crisis for Theresa May and the whole Brexit project.
He was Brexit's main cheerleader, the politician most associated with making it happen, and one of the best known politicians in the country, for good or ill.
It's enough of a mess on its own.
But a well-connected source has just told me it could be more serious than that.
They said it is a concerted push to force the prime minister to drop her Chequers compromise.
"If she doesn't drop Chequers there will be another," they said, "then another, then another, then another."
But if she can't force a compromise through her party that itself took months to stitch together, the prime minister's authority would be significantly diminished.
As Mr Johnson is hemmed in by paparazzi and camera crews outside his official residence that will soon be no longer his home, Theresa May is also a hostage with no obvious means of escape.
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A chronology of key events:
| 1492 - The Christian Kingdoms of Castile and Aragon conquer the Emirate of Granada, ending nearly 800 years of Muslim rule in the south and founding modern Spain as a united state.
Christopher Columbus arrives in the Americas, heralding the conquest of much of South and Central America. Jews and later Muslims are expelled from Spain during the Inquisition.
Spanish Empire
16th-17th centuries - Spanish Empire at its height, with Spain the predominant European power. The rise of Protestant states in northern Europe and the Ottoman Empire in the Mediterranean begin the country's gradual decline.
18th century - The War of the Spanish Succession loses Spain its European possessions outside the Iberian Peninsula. Bourbon dynasty, originally from France, centralises the Spanish state, shutting down many regional autonomous assemblies and modernising government and the military.
1807-1814 - Napoleon's France occupies Spain, which has been a French satellite since 1795. Fierce nationalist resistance and British intervention in the Peninsular War gradually force French troops out.
19th century - Napoleonic legacy of political division and economic dislocation leaves Spain weak and unstable, with frequent changes of government and a low-level insurgency by Carlist supporters of a rival branch of the royal family.
All Latin American colonies win their independence, with Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines in Asia lost during a disastrous war with the United States in 1898.
1910s - Spain sought compensation in conquering colonies in Africa, most significantly northern Morocco and the Spanish Sahara.
1920s - The trade boom achieved by neutrality in the First World War is squandered through fighting Moroccan rebels and the financial mismanagement of the Primo de Rivera dictatorship at home.
Civil war and dictatorship
1931 - The return of democratic government leads to an electoral backlash against the monarchy and its allies, and a republic is declared. Radical policies of land reform, labour rights, educational expansion and anti-Church legislation deepen the political divide.
1936 - After two years of right-wing government, a Popular Front coalition of left-wing and liberal parties narrowly wins parliamentary elections and seeks to reintroduce the radical policies of 1931.
A coup by right-wing military leaders captures only part of the country, leading to three years of civil war.
1939 - General Francisco Franco leads the Nationalists to victory in the Civil War. More than 350,000 Spaniards died in the fighting, and Franco purges all remaining Republicans.
Spain remains neutral throughout the Second World War, although the government's sympathies clearly lie with the Axis powers.
1946-50 - Francoist Spain is ostracised by United Nations and many countries sever diplomatic relations.
1950s - As the Cold War deepens the US gradually improves relations with Spain, extending loans in return for military bases.
Spain is admitted to the UN in 1955 and the World Bank in 1958, and other European countries open up to the Franco government.
El Milagro Español - the economic miracle of the late 1950s - sees Spain's manufacturing and tourism industries take off through liberalisation of state controls.
1959 - The Eta armed separatist group is founded with the aim of fighting for an independent homeland in the Basque region of Spain and France. Its violent campaign begins with an attempt to derail a train carrying politicians in 1961.
1968 - West African colony of Spanish Guinea gains independence as Equatorial Guinea.
1973 December - Eta kills Prime Minister Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco in retaliation for the government's execution of Basque fighters. Subsequent attempts to liberalise the Franco government founder on internal divisions.
Move to democracy
1975 November - Franco dies, and is succeeded as head of state by King Juan Carlos. Spain makes transition from dictatorship to democracy, and withdraws from the Spanish Sahara, ending its colonial empire.
1977 June - First free elections in four decades. Ex-Francoist Adolfo Suárez's Union of the Democratic Centre manages a relatively smooth transition to stable democracy.
1980 - 118 people are killed in Eta's bloodiest year so far.
1981 February - Coup attempt fails after King Juan Carlos makes a televised address demanding that plotters surrender.
1982 - Socialists under Felipe González win elections and govern until 1996. Free education, an expanded welfare state and liberalisation of abortion laws are key policies. Spain joins Nato.
1986 - Spain joins the European Economic Community, later to become the European Union.
Aznar years
1996 March - Conservative José María Aznar becomes prime minister.
1997 July - Eta kills Basque councillor Miguel Ángel Blanco, sparking national outrage and bringing an estimated six million people onto the streets in protest.
1997 December - 23 leaders of Eta's political wing Herri Batasuna are jailed for seven years for collaborating with Eta - the first time any members of the party are jailed as a result of Eta links.
1998 April - Crops destroyed and wildlife wiped out when an iron pyrite mine reservoir belonging to a Canadian-Swedish company bursts its banks causing toxic waste spillage. Waterways feeding Europe's largest wildlife reserve, the Donana national park, are severely contaminated.
1998 September - Eta announces its first indefinite ceasefire since its campaign of violence began.
2000 March - Aznar's Popular Party (PP) wins landslide in general elections.
2002 January - Peseta replaced by Euro.
2002 November - North-west coastline suffers ecological disaster after oil tanker Prestige breaks up and sinks about 130 miles out to sea.
Madrid attacks
2004 March - A total of 191 people are killed in explosions on packed rush-hour trains in Madrid in near-simultaneous pre-election attacks by an Islamic group with links to al-Qaeda.
With Spain still in mourning, the Socialists under José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero defy earlier opinion polls and win a general election.
2004 April - Prime Minister Zapatero orders Spanish troops withdrawn from Iraq in May.
2005 June - Parliament defies Roman Catholic Church by legalising gay marriage and granting homosexual couples same adoption and inheritance rights as heterosexual ones.
2005 September-October - At least 11 die and many more are injured in a series of mass attempts by African migrants to enter the enclaves of Melilla and Ceuta from Morocco in a bid to reach Spain.
Catalan autonomy demands
2006 January - Lt Gen Jose Mena Aguado sacked as head of army ground forces after suggesting that the military might take action in Catalonia if the region gains too much autonomy.
2006 June - Voters in Catalonia back proposals to give the region greater autonomy as well as the status of a nation within Spain.
2007 October - Twenty-one mainly North Africans are found guilty and given long jail sentences for the Madrid train bombings in 2004.
2007 November - Parliament passes a bill formally denouncing General Franco's rule and ordering the removal of all Franco-era statues and symbols from streets and buildings.
2008 March - The Socialists win re-election with an increased margin, but falls short of an absolute majority.
Economic crisis
2009 January - Spanish economy enters recession for first time since 1993.
2009 July - Foreign Minister Miguel Ángel Moratinos visits Gibraltar - the first visit by a Spanish minister in 300 years.
2010 February - Thousands of workers demonstrate against government spending cuts and plans to raise the retirement age by two years to 67 - the first mass labour protests since the Socialists came to power in 2004.
2010 May - Unemployment rate climbs to over 20% for first time in nearly 13 years. Parliament approves 15bn-euro (£13bn) austerity package.
2011 November - Conservative Popular Party wins resounding victory in parliamentary election.
2011 December - New government headed by Mariano Rajoy takes office. Announces new round of austerity measures to slash public spending by 16.5bn euros (£14bn) and nearly halve the public deficit from about 8% of GDP in 2012.
2012 November - The Basque armed group Eta issues a statement that it is ready to disband, disarm and enter talks with the French and Spanish governments.
2013 April - Spain's unemployment rate soars to new record of 27.2% of the workforce in the first quarter, passing six million figure, although the rate of increase slows.
2013 September - Economy registers 0.1% growth in July-September, formally lifting it out of recession.
2014 June - King Juan Carlos abdicates, succeeded by the crown prince as Felipe VI.
2014 November - Spanish government dismisses the result of a symbolic independence referendum in Catalonia.
New political forces
2015 December - Popular Party government loses majority in general election that sees populist anti-austerity movement Podemos and new liberal Cuidadanos movement perform well.
2016 October - Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy forms minority government and ends 10 months of political deadlock after repeat elections in June.
2017 August - Two Islamic State terror attacks kill 16 people in Barcelona and the nearby resort of Cambrils.
2017 October - Madrid imposes direct rule in Catalonia after voters in a referendum back separation from Spain.
2018 May - Basque separatist former armed group Eta announces it is ceasing all political activities.
2018 June - Mariano Rajoy loses a vote of confidence. Socialist leader Pedro Sánchez takes over as prime minister.
2019 April - Snap election boosts Socialists, but they remain short of a majority. Vox becomes first far-right party to win seats since the death of Francisco Franco in 1975.
2019 October - Thousands of protesters take to the street after Supreme Court sentences nine Catalan leaders to long jail terms for sedition over the failed 2017 independence bid.
2019 November - Fourth general election in as many years leaves Socialists still short of a majority, while Vox more than doubles its seats to become the third-largest party.
2020 January - Pedro Sánchez forms minority coalition government with left-wing Podemos party after winning a narrow parliamentary vote of confidence.
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"What's in it for us?" | Patrick BurnsPolitical editor, Midlands
That's the question thousands of Midlanders are entitled to ask of today's Budget, especially those Labour voters who broke the habits of several lifetimes by switching to the Conservatives in areas of the Black Country and North Staffordshire where, until recently, any such thing would have seemed unthinkable.
Remember this Budget is not only the first to be presented on behalf of a new government by a very new chancellor. It's also the first after Brexit and the first after our own flooding emergency along the rivers Severn, Teme and Wye which has left local communities facing long and relentless battles to rebuild their lives and their livelihoods.
What's in it for them, too?
And on top of all this, the deepening health emergency caused by the spread of coronavirus guaranteed that Rishi Sunak's debut could hardly have come at a less promising moment.
For once, Boris Johnson was the warm-up man - Prime Minister's Questions coming immediately before the chancellor's statement.
He did his best to take everyone's minds off coronavirus for a moment. He told Stoke South's Conservative MP Jack Brereton that the Budget would turn his city into "the crucible in which the future prosperity of this country is to be forged".
While Dudley South's Conservative MP Mike Wood asked the PM if the Budget would help the West Midlands' Conservative "metro mayor" Andy Street's drive for "investment in skills and transport infrastructure to power the Midlands Engine".
Mr Johnson replied that the Budget would be "transformational to the infrastructure in this country and in Dudley in particular".
But first things first...
In the event, there was no getting away from the health emergency, however determined the chancellor may have been to avoid this being remembered as "The Coronavirus Budget". The NHS, he promised, would be given whatever it needed to cope with the emergency.
Next came flooding relief. The headline figures of £120m to repair the immediate damage, £200m for local authorities to improve flood defences and £5.2bn capital investment in improving resilience measures also include £23m for communities in the Severn Valley.
So at least there is something in this Budget for the people who met Mr Johnson during his visit to Worcestershire 10 days ago when they told him he must "get Bewdley done".
Some of the other stand-out numbers:
No less bravely, Mr Sunak made a pledge close to Mayor Street's heart: to eradicate rough sleeping during the lifetime of this Parliament.
More Elections?
While Mr Street may be celebrating all these name-checks here at Westminster, he'll not need reminding that, Covid-19 permitting, he faces a mayoral election in May, when he will face a Labour challenger who knows a thing or two about Budget Day himself.
Liam Byrne was a Cabinet Minister at Treasury in the last Labour government. Already he's blamed Mr Street's "dithering" over local rail franchises for the misery that's been visited on hapless local commuters.
Mr Byrne has followed this up by tweeting his "anger and disappointment" that the Budget funds just 20% of what's needed for East Birmingham extension to the Midlands Metro. Even this, he says, will have to be shared with Sprint Bus Phase One where he calculates there is a £73m funding gap.
A landmark Budget this may be, with a Conservative government promising to ramp up public spending. But the opposition insist they are only repairing some of the damage of their own making during the Tories' decade of austerity.
Yet again, we have a Budget wrapped up in complex number-crunching. But that won't stop the raw politics following close behind.
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So how did London cope?
| Tom EdwardsTransport correspondent, London@BBCTomEdwardson Twitter
Transport for London (TfL) certainly seem pretty pleased with how it has gone so far.
The main reason is that Londoners listened to the messages that they put out - i.e don't drive into central London.
That means traffic was 40% down on a normal Sunday. Passengers on public transport went up 25%.
Some Tube stations switched to exit only as would be expected but there were other issues.
For example St James' station had a problem with platform equipment and had to close.
Also repairs to the London Overground took all day after a power failure. That will be a concern, as the speed of recovery will be vital during the Olympics.
But in the main it seems the Tube and roads coped pretty well.
Not prepared
The train companies fared a lot worse.
Many simply were not prepared for the numbers of travellers on the Sunday. Some ran only an enhanced Sunday service; trains, unsurprisingly, were packed.
There are bound to be questions now about how the train companies came to the conclusion that an enhanced Sunday service could cope.
Who did the modelling? On what were the numbers based?
Did the train companies engage with the Met Police and TfL who seemed to correctly predict the numbers?
Was the lack of capacity a financial decision?
A spokesperson for the Association of Train Operating Companies (Atoc) said: "There were extra services and extra carriages to get people to and from London yesterday.
"But operators have to make a call on how many services to run based on projected demand well in advance.
"Clearly in instances where overcrowding did cause problems, operators would apologise to passengers."
The lack of capacity on rail meant crowd control systems were implemented at a number of mainline stations.
Expect to see much more of that this summer. And remember the Olympics will be a much bigger test of the transport system spread over two weeks.
The key message will be to avoid the hot spots and use less busy routes.
Transport chiefs did not want to call it publicly a dry run for the Olympics - but it was.
Am I being fair? Let me know your experiences.
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Vikram Seth is an angry man. | Soutik BiswasDelhi correspondent
The celebrated novelist, who is writing a sequel to his epic bestseller A Suitable Boy, is incensed with the recent decision of India's top court to uphold a law which criminalises gay sex - a ruling seen as a major blow to gay rights.
So much so that the usually calm and dapper writer has posed - unshaved, dishevelled and looking distinctly angry - on the cover of India Today magazine holding a plastic chalkboard speaking 'Not A Criminal' to promote his moving essay in the magazine on gay rights.
No wonder the powerful cover has become a talking point - one doesn't remember any Indian writer doing such a thing ever in the past.
Mr Seth, who took a degree in philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford, was once described by The New York Times as a person with a "polite wit". I found that wit intact when I spoke to him this morning on the cover that is making waves.
Why are you so angry?
I am appalled by the Supreme Court judgement [criminalising gay sex]. The judgement is intellectually shallow and ethically hollow.
It is slipshod in its reasoning and pusillanimous with regard to defending fundamental rights. It was squarely in the province of the Supreme Court to decide the matter, but this normally activist court has kicked the football onto the pitch of an illiberal parliament.
The constitution protects the liberties and rights of Indian citizens. It is not for the judges to confer rights or take them away.
It takes a fair amount to get me incensed. And a judgement which takes away the liberties of at least 50 million lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people in India is scandalous, its inhumane - and if you wish, you can remove the e at the end of that word.
Yet the way you have expressed your protest - posing on the cover of a magazine - is quite unprecedented.
There's nothing heroic in doing what I have done.
There are [gay] people who live lives of quiet desperation in India's towns and villages. They are bullied by their families and relatives.
They need people to voice their dismay and disappointments, people who present themselves as role models. People who, however reticent or reserved they are normally, can present themselves as role models.
There are several prominent India businessmen [who are gay] - who would be wonderful role models. That they don't come out is a sad dereliction of their responsibility to be sympathetic to those who are like them but much more powerless, lonely and isolated.
Can you imagine the difference it would make if four or five widely admired people from different walks of life were to stand up and say: 'This is no big deal or I am bisexual'?
People who have come out in the freedom of the last four years since the high court judgement can't be simply pushed back into darkness of the closet.
But I am talking not of them in this respect, but of those people, full of self doubt or with bullying families who desperately need people to point to and say: 'They are like me too'.
So how did this cover happen?
Photographer Rohit Chawla came up with the idea.
He shot over two sessions in the morning and evening at my residence. There is one set of pictures where I am clean shaven, by the way.
The night before the shoot had been busy and I had gone to bed late. So when Rohit arrived in the morning and found me in the state I was in, he said don't shave.
He came with two assistants, lighting equipment. [But it] was pretty relaxed actually, we had a glass of rum. And then he said he would come in the evening and do another set of pictures - the clean shaven ones!
Rohit very much wanted this picture. He was generous enough to leave the final choice to me. I was rather scared of my parents' opinion that I looked like an unshaven goonda (thug) [in the picture].
In fact I am now shaving as we speak, so that I can redeem myself at lunch.
I did finally agree to Rohit's choice because he said it would help get attention for the piece inside the magazine which I have written and, therefore, help the cause in general.
You look rather angry in the picture. Quite unlike you.
My expression came pretty easy. I had just read some parts of the illogical judgement. That's where my furrowed eyebrows come from. I hadn't shaved anyway. And I had an imaginative photographer.
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1. Our very own dinosaur | As prospectors seek to re-open a disused goldmine in north Wales, here we look back at some other curious finds from across the country.
While Wales may be more famous for being a land of dragons, it also seems Wales was a land of dinosaurs with the discovery of a new species of beast by fossil hunter brothers Nick and Rob Hanigan. The juvenile therapod was found after a rock fall off cliffs in Llantwit Major, Vale of Glamorgan in 2014. Named after the Latin for dragon robber and the brothers' name, the 201 million year old dracorapter hanigani, a relative of T-Rex, is now on display in the National Museum of Wales.
2. Celtic chariot
After prospecting with a metal detector for three decades, Mike Smith, of Milford Haven, finally struck lucky when he dug up part of a Celtic horse harness dating from around 2,000 years ago. The find - which also included a terret ring to guide reins and a pair of chariot wheels - is believed to be the first Celtic chariot burial found in Wales. Chariot burials were reserved for high-ranking chiefs, who would be interred with their chariot, horses, tack and even weapons.
3. Crop marks revealing prehistoric sites
The 2018 heatwave had some surprising consequences for aerial archaeologists. From their lofty heights, they spotted countless long lost settlements as crop marks. One such site was found near Tywyn, Gwynedd, while other prehistoric sites and a suspected Roman fortress were spotted in Monmouthshire. The discoveries are now being followed up by research on the ground.
4. Gold in them thar hills
Is there gold in them thar hills? That is what bosses of a gold mining firm are hoping as they carry out research across a 20-mile stretch of the Dolgellau gold belt in Gwynedd. Their plan is to re-open the Clogau St David's gold mine at Bontddu, Dolgellau, which was shut in 1989. Gold from Clogau has been used for many royal weddings - a tradition that began with the Queen Mother in 1923.
5. Mold's gold cape
This gold cape is a unique ceremonial cape of gold that once slotted over its wearer's shoulders. Made in the Bronze Age around 3,700 years ago, it was found in 1833 by quarrymen in Mold, Flintshire. They uncovered a stone-lined grave with the remains of a skeleton and the cape. Considered one of the finest examples of gold working in Europe, it is now one of the British Museum's most prized artefacts.
6. An ancient canoe
This may look like a rotten old plank - in fact, it is most probably a Bronze Age dug-out canoe found in north Wales under a burnt mound. The hollowed-out oak tree would have likely ferried around cargo - perhaps copper from Anglesey - on the river networks. It could have also aided migration in early Britain, taking people to and from the area along river networks or even overseas.
7. Medieval treasures
Most precious finds from the Middle Ages were items that were accidentally lost, according to Rhianydd Biebrach of the Saving Treasures, Telling Stories programme run by National Museum Wales, Cardiff. This ring, from 1500, once belonged to a merchant from Haverfordwest. It is engraved with the Tau cross of St Anthony, who was believed to protect against disease. The pendant, found near Newport, also had religious significance, the inscribed letters AGLA making reference to the Hebrew phrase Atha Gebri Leilan Adonai, meaning 'Thou art mighty for ever, O Lord'.
8 A medieval ship
Hidden treasures do not come much bigger than this one. A 15th Century merchant ship was discovered in the mud on the banks of the River Usk in 2002, during building work for Newport's Riverfront Theatre. There was a local campaign to preserve it and archaeologists have since been painstakingly preserving the 2,000 timbers and artefacts - from shoes, coins to a cannonball - discovered during the excavation. The Newport Medieval Ship - which would have been 30m long - is believed to originate from the Basque region of Spain in the mid 1450s and visitors are able to see ongoing conservation work for themselves.
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Everything about Uber is big. | By Dearbail JordanBusiness reporter in New York
The taxi app and delivery business is America's biggest venture capital-backed company.
It is forecast to raise $10bn ($7.6bn) when it sells its shares on the New York Stock Exchange - one of the largest amounts on record.
And the 10-year-old company could be valued at as much as $90bn when it floats.
However, the other big thing about Uber is its losses which, although down on the previous year, hit $3bn in 2018.
And that raises the biggest point of all - when will Uber make a profit and perhaps justify that massive market valuation?
It is the question that Uber's chief executive, Dara Khosrowshahi, will face over the next few weeks as he embarks on a roadshow to visit potential investors ahead of the flotation, which is expected in May.
What reception will Uber get?
Uber is not the first of its ilk to float this year.
Of the so-called unicorns - venture capital-backed businesses valued at $1bn or more - Uber's closest US rival, Lyft, floated at the end of March, while online scrapbook company Pinterest is expected to list its shares next week.
But so far, those initial public offerings (IPO) have shown that there is some caution over valuations. Lyft's stock price has fallen 15.2% since it floated.
Pinterest has priced its shares at between $15 and $17 each, which gives it a value of up to $11.3bn. However, that is still below the $12bn valuation the company had during its most recent round of private funding two years ago.
Against this backdrop, will Uber be able to hit that $100bn valuation?
Kathleen Smith, from Renaissance Capital, says: "I think sometimes they are a little bit tone deaf because they've been in a world where everyone has been climbing all over themselves to get to invest in their companies.
"They think then 'oh, that means they'll roll out the red carpet in the public markets' - and it's not that kind of place."
When will Uber make a profit?
The company is unlikely to make any money soon, according to the IPO documents it filed on Thursday.
"We have incurred significant losses since inception, including in the US and other major markets," it said. "We expect our operating expenses to increase significantly in the foreseeable future, and we may not achieve profitability."
It expects losses to continue in the "near-term" because of higher investment in areas such as increasing the use of its apps, expanding into new markets and continuing to develop its autonomous cars division.
In a letter to potential shareholders, Mr Khosrowshahi said: "We will not shy away from making short-term financial sacrifices where we see clear long-term benefits."
Jordan Stuart, from Federated Investors Inc., says investors are willing to be patient when it comes to profit, but only if a company can spell out how it intends to get there.
Amazon, for example, didn't make an annual profit until six years after its 1997 flotation. Even then, it took a while before investors could see a sustainable path to profitability.
Mr Stuart said: "The stock really moved let's say five or six years ago when they were really able to show 'hey, we can turn off investment to show profitability if we want and give up top line growth for bottom line growth but we're not going to do that'.
"Some of these companies, if they can show that scalability, that ability to turn that profit nozzle on or off, then I think investors... are going to give companies a chance to say 'this is worth X amount of billions of dollars'."
Uber's sales are growing. Revenue has risen from $3.8bn in 2016 to $11.2bn in 2018.
Gross bookings from Uber's core business - which accounts for the majority of sales - jumped from $18.8bn in 2016 to $41.5bn last year.
In its filing, Uber says it expects people to move away from the expense of owning a car to using services to get around.
Uber is also investing in e-bikes and e-scooters where it hopes to capture customers who make shorter journeys.
But investors want to see a plan.
Mr Stuart said: "I do believe [investors] have raised the bar and said 'we're not going to look at clicks or eyeballs or users anymore unless you can show us where is that profitability'."
What do Uber's IPO documents reveal?
Dan Ives, managing director and equity analyst Wedbush Securities, said the company's IPO filing is the first time people will be able to "really get under the covers of Uber to understand the financials".
But there are some areas of concern.
The firm's US and Canadian business does not appear to have recovered from the #DeleteUber campaign in 2017 - not a stellar year for the company - which was first spurred by claims that Uber attempted to break a taxi strike by New York taxi drivers.
The hashtag then reappeared on social media when former Uber engineer Susan Fowler wrote a blog which alleged a toxic work environment at the company.
Uber said "our ridesharing category position generally declined in 2018 in the substantial majority of the regions in which we operate impacted in part by heavy subsidies and discounts by our competitors in various markets".
Another potential concern is the employment status of Uber's drivers. They are classed as independent contractors, but Uber is still facing legal issues about this and if workers were to be considered employees then Uber could face higher costs.
What now for Uber?
Uber did not specify what price it will sell its shares at - that is something to be determined over the coming weeks as Mr Khosrowshahi meets potential investors.
"A lot of technology investors are looking for is who is going to be the next FAANG," said Mr Ives, referring to the acronym for Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Alphabet, which is the parent company of Google.
But Ms Smith said: "In light of the fact that we have seen Lyft and its very poor trading and then in seeing what Pinterest is doing tells me that investors may be a bit more 'wait and see' about Uber."
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The omens weren't good. | Will GompertzArts editor@WillGompertzBBCon Twitter
It was the evening after the heavily advertised nationwide release of The Girl in the Spider's Web: A New Dragon Tattoo Story, and the city centre cinema where I went to see the film was as empty as a trickster's promise.
Such a pitiful showing would have been a dispiriting sight for the Sony Pictures execs who'd backed the movie to kick-start the stalled Millennium Series franchise. For those who didn't show up, rest easy - you made the right choice.
The fifth film to have been adapted from Stieg Larsson's best-selling Scandi-noir saga is easily the worst of the bunch.
And that's not because it is an adaptation of the fourth book in the series written after Larsson's death by David Lagercrantz (who also ghosted the best sports autobiography in living memory, I Am Zlatan Ibrahimovic).
The problem with the film, nominally a psychological thriller, is that it is neither disturbing nor thrilling.
It is a perfectly serviceable but very predictable action movie full of car-chase clichés and video game shoot-outs, powered by a plot that has about as much dramatic tension as a game of garden bowls.
The movie opens with the two young Salander sisters playing chess in their father's draughty and over-the-top eerie cliff-top concrete castle. When they finish the game their sexually abusive dad decides it's his turn to play with them.
Not nice.
Lisbeth hurls herself from a broken balcony into the deep snow below and legs it. Camilla stays.
Cut to a couple of decades later and Lisbeth (Claire Foy) has moved into an industrial space in town that makes her dad's old place look cosy. Still, it matches her goth-punk aesthetic and cold-as-ice persona, which, in turn, fits with her life as a monosyllabic vigilante intent on dishing out the old electric cattle-prod treatment to an assortment of baddies.
She takes on a detective job for a nerdy computer programmer (Stephen Merchant) who has created a nuclear version of Frankenstein's Monster.
"What am I looking for?" she asks.
"The sum of all my sins," replies the bearded Merchant.
It's not a great line in any circumstance, but is beyond limp coming from the mouth of a man who looks like his idea of being naughty is un-tucking his pyjama top.
Anyway, off Lisbeth goes, riding her black Ducati motorbike with elbows out like wings, into a murky world of deadly Russians, decent Americans, and inscrutable Swedes. She is not entirely alone; as ever she can rely on a little help from a few geeky friends and her old chum and admirer Mikael Blomkvist (Sverrir Gudnason), an investigative journalist.
And that's it really.
The story unfolds as you would imagine, with plot twists as surprising as getting a woolly jumper for Christmas.
Claire Foy does a reasonable job in a limited role, which offers precious little opportunity to flesh out her character beyond being a cartoonishly two-dimensional action hero blessed with the tech skills to put her in the running for Employee of the Month at PC World.
Who knows why the film's talented director Fede Álvarez (Don't Breathe) has chosen to swap mind games for endless punch-ups and shots of laptop screens.
It misses the point of Larsson's creation.
What makes the books so compelling, and the original film in which Noomi Rapace played Lisbeth, is the inner psychological drama that determines and informs each protagonist's actions and relationships.
They are complicated, dark stories, populated by damaged and complex characters. They need time to evolve and unfold in their otherworldliness. The Girl in the Spider's Web doesn't allow for any of that. Instead we have yet another car chase to crack on with and an electric cattle prod to wield.
Why have dark and complicated when you can have simple and light?
The Girl in the Spider's Web still has her dragon tattoo but she's lost her soul.
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President: Recep Tayyip Erdogan
| Recep Tayyip Erdogan was sworn in as president in August 2014, cementing his position as Turkey's most powerful leader.
His victory in Turkey's first popular presidential election capped 12 years as prime minister in which the economy tripled in dollar terms, while fuelling fears of growing authoritarianism.
Turkey is a parliamentary republic and the presidency largely ceremonial, by Mr Erdogan won a referendum to increase his powers and abolish the post of prime minister.
Critics warn that this will concentrate too much power in the hands of a leader with autocratic instincts, and lead the country ever further from the secular ideals of the republic's founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
Mr Erdogan became prime minister in 2003. He brought economic and political stability and faced down the country's powerful military establishment, which previously tended to overthrow elected governments it suspected of challenging the secular constitution or national security.
Problems mount
In the summer of 2013, he briefly looked under pressure for the first time as mass anti-government protests erupted in several cities, further inflamed by police violence. And later that year, the government was hit by a police inquiry into alleged corruption among the prime minister's allies.
The corruption probes unleashed a fierce power struggle between Mr Erdogan and his erstwhile ally, the influential US-based Islamic preacher Fethullah Gulen.
Another substantial setback to stability was the resumption of military operations against the Kurdish PKK armed separatist group in mid-2015.
This ended a truce that had been in place since 2013, and which had previously been trumpeted as a landmark success for Mr Erdogan's strategy of steady military pressure paired with negotiations.
These troubles culminated in a failed military coup attempt in 2016, which prompted the president to launch a wave of arrests against his perceived opponents in the army and civil service. He accused Fethullah Gulen of being behind the coup, which Mr Gulen has denied.
Abroad, Turkey has been drawn into Syria's civil war, where it has carried out airstrikes against the Islamic Group as well as Kurdish allies of the United States, while also opposing the government of President Assad. This has caused tensions in relations with Washington, as well as Mr Assad's Russian backers.
Relations with the European Union have also deteriorated, mainly over disputes about Turkey's human rights record, and long-stalled membership talks face formal suspension since the post-coup-attempt crackdown.
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It's the big bin delivery! | Peter HenleyPolitical editor, South of England@BBCPeterHon Twitter
The Isle of Wight Council is used to organising collection of recycling and rubbish, but now it is switching to wheelie bins and it has got to work out a way to get at least one, maybe two bins, to every household.
The whole process will take more than a month, and contractor Amey has brought in a specialist company which just completed the delivery of 1.2 million bins in Birmingham.
Amey's Paul Southall said: "Delivering every household on the Isle of Wight a new black bin and green bin insert or a pack of gull proof sacks is a major task.
'Gold stars'
"The deliveries will follow the 10 different collection routes, so properties in the west of the island will begin to receive their bins first."
The island also runs a food collection service, with food caddies already delivered.
Then there's the green waste...
No wonder councils like the New Forest are consulting on ways to reduce the cost of household waste collection and disposal.
But it's the biggest thing people associate with the council. So getting it right is important.
In Cardiff, protesters dumped their new wheelie bins back at the council saying they were too big and "ruined" the look of some neighbourhoods, especially where they had been delivered to flats and houses without gardens.
In Bournemouth, when people realised electronic chips had been fitted that could be used to monitor recycling they started ripping them out.
Perhaps all councils should follow the lead of a Sussex council, which is rewarding people who recycle well by sticking a gold star on the bin.
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What do you think about hospital food? | Bake Off judge Prue Leith is the latest celebrity chef to be recruited in the quest to improve the food hospital patients eat.
The government has launched a review of hospital food, first announced in June, to set new quality standards for the 140 million meals served annually.
Readers have been sending their experiences - both good and bad - to the BBC, while others have shared theirs on social media.
'Tasteless'
Martin Wilks, 58, from Crosby, says the quality of food at a hospital in Liverpool, where he has received treatment for four years, has "definitely deteriorated".
"The food is cheaply produced and tasteless," he says, referencing a lamb and vegetable stew he was served in July.
"I was forced to go and buy sandwiches from the hospital shop and relied on visitors bringing food in to get enough to eat and have a balanced diet."
Jane Harvey, 44, from Newport, says food during her stay in her local hospital reminded her of "1980s school dinners".
"Looks like a nice chocolate number doesn't it? Wrong! It's a pineapple cake - so hard you could have bounced it off the walls!" she says.
Another reader, who asked not to be named, says he wrote to the hospital CEO when staff served him ham and a tomato during a stay two years ago, and was assured that employees eat the same food in the canteen.
"I suspect few chose such an appetising ham recipe," he says.
Terri Donnelly, 28, from Chesterfield, says that a meal she was served at a local hospital in July had "more breadcrumbs than chicken".
"I also had fish fingers at one point and they were grey and hard inside," she says, adding that she moved to a hospital in Sheffield where the food was of a higher quality.
'Long overdue'
People also took to social media to share their experiences of meals.
Some welcomed the government review.
'Lovely'
Yet others tweeted in defence of hospital food.
Kevin Pascoe, 62, from Bridgend, often visits his brother, who needs easily chewable food because of digestive problems.
"The food he has doesn't always look the most appetising because of his dietary needs, but I know it smells absolutely lovely when I feed him at visiting times and he says it tastes beautiful," he says.
"He eats really well in hospital and far better than his care home."
A member of the catering team at a hospital in Enniskillen says that everything is served to patients fresh.
"Our food is cooked on site and [put in] heated trolleys and brought to the wards, where it served straight away," he says, adding that the best meals are roast dinners on Sundays.
'Nothing but praise'
Meanwhile, Paul Robinson, who stayed in a Blackpool hospital, told the BBC: "I have nothing but praise for the catering team there, they provide excellent meals throughout the day for over 800 beds".
And Michael Gannon, 68, from London, says he had "excellent" freshly-prepared food during a recent stay in hospital - but has had worse experiences elsewhere.
"I fail to understand why there is such a variance in hospital food. It should be seen as a key factor in helping all patients to recover from their treatment but some trusts are failing badly," he says.
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It's not over, not yet. | Laura KuenssbergPolitical editor@bbclaurakon Twitter
The two sides in this complicated and drawn out process have agreed that it is worth trying one last time to find a way through their profound differences.
But the statements from the prime minister and the EU chief, Ursula von der Leyen, signal clearly that a trade deal is out of reach right now - spelling out that if no-one budges in the next few days, it's simply not going to happen.
A feature of Brexit negotiations has often been the last minute stand off, the political emergency, before suddenly, lo and behold, a deal emerges from the wreckage.
By Monday night, that tradition may have been proven again.
Yet it seems there is a lot more to be done than ironing out a few last minute glitches.
The UK believes that after months of talks, the EU - pushed by some member states - has hardened its stance on the same old stumbling blocks.
And that's pushed a deal that was in reach just a few days ago, further away.
Mechanics and conundrums
For both sides, not reaching a deal would be a political failure.
The prime minister has warned that it might not come to pass and has tried to assure the public about what would happen if it can't be done.
But the UK and the EU have both said on repeated occasions that a deal is what they want - eager to avoid the disruption of leaving the transition period at the end of this year without arrangements in place.
And their negotiating teams have worked for months on the mechanics of how the conundrums over our departure from the trading bloc could be resolved.
But the two sides are still stuck over the fundamental, political question - who really calls the shots.
It was Theresa May who coined the phrase, "no deal is better than a bad deal".
In the next 48 hours, Boris Johnson and the European Union have to decide if they want to test if she was right.
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A chronology of key events
| 1947 - End of British rule and partition of sub-continent into mainly Hindu India and Muslim-majority state of Pakistan.
1947 - The Maharaja of Kashmir signs a treaty of accession with India after a Pakistani tribal army attacks. War breaks out between India and Pakistan over the region.
1948 - India raises Kashmir in the UN Security Council, which in Resolution 47 calls for a referendum on the status of the territory. The resolution also calls on Pakistan to withdraw its troops and India to cut its military presence to a minimum. A ceasefire comes into force, but Pakistan refuses to evacuate its troops. Kashmir is for practical purposes partitioned.
1951 - Elections in the Indian-administered state of Jammu and Kashmir back accession to India. India says this makes a referendum unnecessary. The UN and Pakistan say a referendum needs to take into account the views of voters throughout the former princely state.
1953 - The pro-Indian authorities dismiss and arrest Prime Minister Sheikh Abdullah, leader of the governing National Conference, after he takes a pro-referendum stance and delays formal accession to India. A new Jammu and Kashmir government ratifies accession to India.
1957 - The constitution of Indian-administrated Jammu and Kashmir defines it as part of India.
1950s - China gradually occupies eastern Kashmir (Aksai Chin).
Indian war with China
1962 - China defeats India in a short war for control of Aksai Chin.
1963 - Pakistan cedes the Trans-Karakoram Tract of Kashmir to China.
1965 - A brief war between Indian and Pakistan over Kashmir ends in a ceasefire and a return to the previous positions.
1971-72 - Another Indo-Pakistani war ends in defeat for Pakistan and leads to the 1972 Simla Agreement.This turns the Kashmir ceasefire line into the Line of Control, pledges both sides to settle their differences through negotiations, and calls for a final settlement of the Kashmir dispute. The Agreement forms the basis of Pakistani-Indian relations thereafter.
1974 - The Opposition Plebiscite Front in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir drops demand for a referendum in return for extensive autonomy in an agreement with the Indian government. Sheikh Abdullah becomes chief minister, and his political dynasty continues to dominate the National Conference and state after his death in 1982.
1984 - The Indian Army seizes control of the Siachen Glacier, an area not demarcated by the Line of Control. Pakistan makes frequent attempts to capture the area in the following decades.
Start of insurgency
1987 - Disputed state elections in Indian-administrated Jammu and Kashmir give impetus to a pro-independence insurgency centred around the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF). India accuses Pakistan of fomenting the insurgency by despatching fighters across the Line of Control, which Pakistan denies.
1990 - The insurgency escalates after the Indian Army kills about 100 demonstrators at Gawakadal Bridge. Attacks and threats lead to the flight of almost all Hindus from the Kashmir Valley area of the state. India imposes Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) in Jammu and Kashmir.
1990s - The insurgency continues, with Kashmiri militants training in Pakistan and India deploying hundreds of thousands of troops in Jammu and Kashmir. Violence against civilians by both sides is widespread.
1999 - India and Pakistan go to war again after militants cross from Pakistani-administered Kashmir into the Indian-administered Kargil district. India repulses the attack, accuses Pakistan of being behind it, and breaks off relations.
2001-2004 - Moves to boost relations between the two countries are punctuated by continuing violence, notably an attack on the parliament of Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir in Srinagar in 2001.
2010 - Major protests erupt in the Kashmir Valley of Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir over the summer after a demonstrator is killed by the Indian army. The protests abate in September after the government announce measures to ease tension.
2011 August - Chief Minister Omar Abdullah announces an amnesty for the 1,200 young men who threw stones at security forces during the anti-government protests in the Kashmir Valley the previous year.
Indian State Human Rights Commission confirms presence of more than 2,000 unidentified bodies in unmarked graves near the Line of Control. Activists say many may be people who disappeared after being arrested by security forces.
2011 September - Indian forces kill three Pakistani soldiers in firing across the Line of Control. India accuses Pakistan of opening fire first.
2013 February - Kashmiri Jaish-e-Mohammed member Mohammad Afzal Guru hanged over role in 2001 Indian parliament terror attack, prompting protests in which two young men are killed.
2013 September - Prime ministers of India and Pakistan meet and agree to try reduce the number of violent incidents at their disputed border in Kashmir.
2014 August - India cancels talks with Pakistan after accusing it of interfering in India's internal affairs. The decision comes after Pakistan's High Commissioner in Delhi consulted Kashmiri separatist leaders in advance of the talks.
During a visit to the disputed border state of Jammu and Kashmir, India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi accuses Pakistan of waging a proxy war against India in Kashmir.
2014 October - Pakistan and India exchange strongly-worded warnings, after a flare-up of violence across their common border leaves at least 18 people dead.
BJP joins government
2015 March - India's ruling BJP party is sworn into government in Indian-administered Kashmir for first time in coalition with local People's Democratic Party, with the latter's Mufti Mohammad Sayeed as chief minister.
2015 September - Muslim separatist leaders in Indian-administered Kashmir close shops, businesses and government departments in protest at the enforcement of a colonial-era ban on eating beef.
2015 November - One person dies in violent protests following a visit to Indian-administered Kashmir by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
2016 April - Mehbooba Mufti, the leader of the People's Democratic Party (PDP), becomes the first female chief minister of Indian-administered Kashmir following the death of her father and party founder Mufti Mohammad Sayeed.
Curfew
2016 July - Authorities impose an indefinite curfew in most parts of Indian-administered Kashmir after the killing of popular militant by security forces of Burhan Wani, a popular militant and top commander of the Hizbul Mujahideen group, sparks violent protests.
2016 August - A curfew in most parts of Indian-administered Kashmir is lifted but schools, shops and most banks remain shut and mobile and internet services remain suspended. At least 68 civilians and two security officials have died and more than 9,000 people injured in over 50 days of violence according to official tallies.
2016 September - India and Pakistan exchange a war of words after 18 Indian soldiers are killed in a raid by gunmen on an army base in Indian-administered Kashmir.
2016 September - India says it has carried out "surgical strikes" against suspected militants along the de-facto border with Pakistan in Kashmir but Pakistan rejects the claims.
2016 October - The Indian army shoots dead three suspected militants as they try to enter an army camp in northern Kashmir.
2016 November - Human Rights Watch appeals for an end to the burning of schools in Indian-administered Kashmir after the total set alight since a wave of pro-separatist unrest began in July reaches 25.
2016 November - Thousands of villagers in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir are evacuated after violence escalates following the killing of seven Pakistani soldiers in an exchange of fire between India and Pakistan along the Line of Control.
2017 May - Thousands defy a curfew across Indian-administered Kashmir to attend the funeral of top rebel commander Sabzar Ahmad Bhat.
2017 July - Violent clashes take place in Indian-administered Kashmir on the anniversary of the death of militant commander Burhan Wani.
2017 July - Militants attack Hindu pilgrims, killing at least seven and injuring 16, in the worst such attack since 2000.
2019 August - Indian government strips Jammu and Kashmir state of the special status that gave it significant autonomy.
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Here is an odd thing. | Robert PestonEconomics editor
When I talk to Barclays' directors and also to regulators about how much that bank allocated to pay what it calls incentives - or bonuses, in most people's parlance - they say that the value of the incentive pool fell 18% to £2.5bn.
But that is not the picture presented in newspapers, or indeed what many investors and MPs believe happened.
They all point to a 10% rise in the so-called incentive pool, to just under £2.4bn.
And the typical reflection on the putative rise is that it is outrageous given that Barclays' pre-tax profits fell in 2013 almost a third to £5.2bn, on the measure preferred and cited by the bank.
What's more, Barclays is years from hitting its main investment target, namely to earn the cost of its equity, or the profits that it would have to generate to adequately compensate owners for the money they invest in the bank.
Last year its return on equity was 4.5%, which compares with the bank's estimate that its cost of equity is 10.5% - and, for what it's worth, some analysts calculate its cost of equity as higher still.
So for Barclays' critics, the bank gave higher rewards to its top people for an operating performance that was - at best - mediocre.
And that seems to corroborate the widespread view that banks are run for the benefit of its boss class rather than for the owners.
Not true, say members of Barclays board. Even regulators, who have become critics of the way that banks construct their remuneration, tell me Barclays has not been as rapacious in its pay practices as it is widely portrayed.
They insist that the number to look at is the incentive pool before adjustment for risk and bad behaviour, or the amount allocated for bonuses and incentives as a reward for the 2013 operating performance, but excluding penalties imposed as punishment for employees for the bank's sins in prior years.
Now this gross incentive pool, with no conduct or risk adjustment, was deliberately reduced by 18% to £2.5bn.
Arguably it was not cut enough, given that profits fell almost a third,
And the bank puts its hand up, and says that lesser drop was deliberate.
Sir John Sunderland, the chairman of Barclays' remuneration committee, writes in the annual report that the "global resignation rate for senior staff in 2013 was significantly above that in 2012", and that departures of senior investment bankers in the US almost doubled - which is why he and his colleagues took a decision to pay what it deemed appropriate to "ensure the health of the franchise".
That translated into 481 Barclays employees earning more than £1m, up from 428 in the previous year, of which 274 are based in the US and 130 in the UK.
For those into "pay porn", 54 of Barclays' people earned between £2.5m and £5m, while eight earned more than £5m.
But if the gross bonus pool was cut, why precisely is the net bonus pool higher?
Well it was because the "risk and conduct" deductions for 2013 - largely penalties imposed on employees for mis-selling PPI credit insurance and interest-rate swaps - were just £290m, compared with deductions in the previous year of £860m (those bigger deductions were the self-imposed punishment for rigging Libor interest rate benchmarks).
A shorthand way of seeing this is that bonuses were down, but maluses (or negative bonuses) were down more - so the net bonus pot was expanded.
Where does this nuanced and complicated pay picture leave Barclays?
Well, directors are fearful that the bank may be humiliated by shareholders when it comes to the annual vote on remuneration, that there may be a large protest vote - even though they briefed influential investors on their pay plans before announcing them, and thought they had their acquiescence.
Also two almost existential questions for Barclays - questions that will certainly determine whether the chief executive Antony Jenkins is deemed to be a success - remain largely unresolved.
First, what is the future of its very large US investment bank, if large Wall Street rivals feel less constrained in how, and how much, they pay their senior bankers? Can Barclays keep its talent, and if it can't, does that matter?
Second, how will Barclays make an adequate return for its shareholders without cutting its operating costs, of which two-thirds are what it pays its people?
To be clear, the rise in the net bonus pool of a couple of hundred million pounds, while of enormous symbolic power, was neither here nor there in a year when operating expenses rose from £18.6bn to £19.9bn.
What disappointed most of its investors most last year about Barclays was a failure to make significant cuts in the bank's overheads.
That failure was less about how much it pays each employee and was much more about how many people it employs.
It is not only the investors who take that view. So does a chunk of the board. The very big pressure on Antony Jenkins is to shrink by many thousands the number of Barclays employees.
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A cut in the European Union's budget. | Nick RobinsonPolitical editor
That is what Parliament voted for last year when Tory eurosceptics united with Labour to defeat the government. That is what David Cameron's advisers believe he may soon be able to say he's achieved.
Although no deal has yet been done the numbers currently being discussed for the next seven year EU budget are more than 30 billion euros (£25.5bn) lower than the one it will replace.
It has been a long and dull night for the prime minister.
He and the 26 other EU leaders left the Brussels negotiating table at around 12.30 in the morning and were only called back about six hours later. .
Besides a brief meeting with Germany's Chancellor Merkel and France's President Hollande there was not a great deal - beyond I'm told a supply of espressos, haribos, and fruit - to fill the small hours as Brussels negotiators put pressure on other countries to accept a squeeze.
As in any negotiation nothing is agreed until everything is agreed and the signs are that there is still a way to go before Europe's leaders sign on the dotted line.
Even if a deal is done with a headline cut to the EU budget there will be much to scrutinise.
Will the cut be as big as the one Britain aimed for?
The benchmark Downing Street seem keen to use is the so-called EU payments ceiling - what David Cameron likes to call Europe's credit card. It was €942.8bn (£803.9bn) for the seven years from 2007-2013. The expectation is that the new ceiling may end up being around €908bn (£774bn).
His critics may point out that he has not achieved a freeze in line with the figure of €886 billion the Treasury has previously used.
This number was produced by taking the EU's spending in 2011 - as it happens a relatively low spending year - and multiplying it by seven to cover the period of the EU's budget. It was always an arbitrary figure but it is one that ministers used.
How much spending has Brussels managed to classify as "off budget"?
Some EU spending is and always has been classified in this way - for instance Europe's solidarity fund which gives member states help in the event of floods, forest fires and the like.
British officials insist that no existing spending will be reclassified but will the figures for this and other off budget funds grow?
How much will Britain's contributions to the EU increase?
David Cameron has always insisted that Britain's EU rebate was non negotiable. Nevertheless the value of it has been falling thanks to the last budget deal done by Tony Blair.
The result is that in the looking glass world of EU budgets the EU's total spending may fall whilst Britain's payments actually increase.
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Manchester nightclub Sankeys is closing. | The owner of the dance music club David Vincent said he is closing its doors indefinitely to concentrate on his club in Ibiza.
He said he wants to make the Ibiza club the best in the world and cannot keep both clubs open at the same time as he needs his staff from Manchester.
The club which was originally called Sankeys Soap will shut its doors with a 12-hour "spectacular party" on 6 May.
Mr Vincent said he has "truly amazing memories" of Manchester.
He said: "Brilliant highs include being recognised for contributing significant culture to the city of Manchester at a national museum and also quite a few challenging lows.
"We have made our name in Manchester as the world's best club in the DJ Mag Awards 2010, and the Sankeys spirit will live on there."
DJ Krysko, who was a resident at Sankeys for six years, said on his Twitter account it was a "sad day".
Sankeys is based in Beehive Mill, Northern Quarter, Manchester. It opened in 1994.
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So now we know. | By Richard BlackEnvironment correspondent, BBC News
Following release of the US government's latest estimate, the Deepwater Horizon disaster is confirmed as the biggest ever accidental release of oil into the oceans.
It exceeds the 1979 Ixtoc I leak - also in the Gulf of Mexico. It's comfortably bigger than tanker releases such as the Torrey Canyon and Amoco Cadiz, and 20 times the size of the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill with which it is often compared.
Now that BP finally appears to have the flow under control, an important question - perhaps the most important of all - is being asked: it may have been the biggest, but was it the worst?
It is a simple-sounding question, but devilishly hard to answer.
What impacts are we talking about - on the coast, on the ocean surface, or the sea floor?
Which species are we including - fish, shrimp, insects, plants, birds, whales, turtles - or some combination of them all?
Are we looking long-term or short-term, local or regional - and are we to include or exclude impacts from the use of chemical dispersants and fires and the other containment measures?
One thing that is clear is that different parts of the Gulf coast have seen very different levels of impact.
Two weeks ago, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) announced that so little oil was being seen in a zone covering more than 26,000 square miles (67,000 sq km) - a quarter of US territorial waters in the Gulf - that fishing could safely re-start.
Yet in other areas, particularly along the coast, people are struggling daily to nurse oil-soaked birds back to health.
Many commentators were saying during the early days of the episode that the ecological impacts would depend largely on the vagaries of winds and tides; and so it has proven.
Noaa has said that about three-quarters of the 4.9 million barrels leaked into the Gulf waters has already vanished from the area - through evaporation, capture, burning, or dispersion.
But that still leaves more than a million barrels at sea.
As a formerly significant US figure said in the context of a different Gulf: there are known unknowns, and unknown unknowns.
Danger zone
Andy Nyman, an associate professor of Wetland Wildlife Ecology at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, has spent years conducting laboratory and field research into the possible impacts of oil spills on the coastal wetlands that are so vital as nurseries for fish and shrimp, nesting grounds for birds and as coastal defences.
"It's going to be difficult to pick up the impacts of the oil spill and separate those from natural seasonal variability," he says.
"Impacts we'll be looking for in the short term include the loss of wetland grasses and reductions in fish and other things that live in the water.
"In the longer term we could see reduced productivity in these populations, but we may not be able to detect it because the annual variations are quite large."
He relates taking two trips along the coastal fringe in recent weeks.
In one zone, they could see virtually no impact on the grasses. In the other, a stretch of coast about 10km (six miles) long showed significant damage, with swathes of grass brown and shedding leaves.
Yet on many plants, new green stems were sprouting - just as happened on the grasses in Professor Nyman's experimental plot after he had coated them in oil to see how they would perform.
How the grasslands will fare in the long term is definitely a known unknown.
Time's lens will also reveal the impact on fish and shrimp, so vital to the local economy.
But again, the stock varies naturally from season to season; so picking out a specific impact of the oil leak could prove difficult.
Out in the Gulf itself, the impact on bluefin tuna is potentially significant. The spawning grounds have been covered in oil at times, and there are fears that an entire year's brood may be missing.
But that will not become clear for several years. Estimating the marine impacts will also be complicated by the fact that closing the fisheries has given stocks a respite from nets and hooks.
Deep unknowns
So how much do we know?
Several hundred thousand seabirds died from the Exxon Valdez spill - possibly as many as 600,000, according to some estimates.
By contrast, the number of birds found dead along the Gulf of Mexico coast is a little over 3,000.
Just over 500 sea turtles and 64 dolphins have also been found dead.
But that is partly a function of the leak's geography; turtles would not have been affected by the Exxon Valdez simply because they do not frequent the coasts of Alaska.
Conversely, the Exxon Valdez claimed the lives of several thousand sea otters - which do not live along the Gulf coast.
An important unknown - about which very little is known - is the importance of flows of oil deep underwater that were detected a couple of months ago and that almost certainly have dispersants mixed in.
The use of these chemicals is controversial. They keep the oil away from shore - but the cost is paid in clogged wads of crude that sink to the sea floor.
Paul Anastas, assistant administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Office of Research and Development, acknowleged that dispersants were far from perfect, but said their use here had been, on balance, positive.
"The purpose of the dispersants is to put the oil in a form that can be broken down and degraded by natural microbes," he said.
"Once it makes to it to shore it is causing an impact on our most sensitve ecosystem that is extremely difficult to clean up and has an extreme negative impact on the ecosystem of the Gulf."
The EPA has just finished a batch of tests showing that dispersants mixed with oil are no more toxic to marine life in the Gulf than oil on its own - contradicting the claims of some critics.
The Deepwater Horizon operation saw the injection of 771,272 gallons (2,919,582 litres) of dispersant at depth, in addition to the 1,072,514 gallons (4,059,907 litres) used on the surface.
The impact of the deep water deployment is definitely an unknown unknown, as it has not been used on anything like this scale before.
Expeditions are planned to investigate the impact on reefs, but they have yet to report.
Other important investigations are going on into how quickly the oil is breaking down in the warm Gulf waters - something that should in principle happen much faster than in the icy conditions of Alaska's Prince Edward Sound, or the Cornish seas where the Torrey Canyon spilt its cargo in March 1967.
That rate will have practical implications for the seabirds that will come to winter along the Gulf coasts - the piping plover, the blue-winged teal and the northern pintail - because it will largely determine how much oil will be there to greet them.
Two decades on, the ecological impacts of Exxon Valdez are still being counted.
And while the warmer Gulf waters are unlikely to take quite so long to settle, even a preliminary reckoning will have to wait until the first wintering birds have returned, shrimping boats have cast their nets again right across their grounds, and the wetland grasses have had a first chance to shed their oily carapaces and sprout anew in a fresh Spring.
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President: Muhammadu Buhari | Muhammadu Buhari swept to a historic election victory in March 2015, becoming the first opposition candidate to win a Nigerian presidential poll.
A former military ruler, Mr Buhari defeated incumbent Goodluck Jonathan by three million votes.
Mr Jonathan's People's Democratic Party had dominated Nigerian politics since the end of military rule in 1999, but its supremacy was shaken by the formation of the Mr Buhari's All Progressives Congress party in 2013.
The APC in particular capitalised on Mr Jonathan's failure to deal with endemic corruption and the Boko Haram Islamist insurgency gripping northern Nigeria.
A Muslim Fulani from northern Nigeria, Muhammadu Buhari in 1983 helped to oust elected President Shehu Shagari to become the first head of Nigeria's second period of military rule, lasting until 1999.
His regime sought to combat crime and corruption, but was also accused of serious rights abuses. In 1985, he was himself overthrown by Gen Ibrahim Babangida.
Since the restoration of democracy in 1999, Mr Buhari stood three times for the presidency before winning in 2015.
He has distanced himself from military rule, promising to respect democracy and govern as a civilian leader. He scored a major diplomatic success in June 2015 when neighbouring countries agreed to Nigeria commanding a joint force to counter Boko Haram, rather than rotating the command among themselves.
He has enjoyed less success in restoring Nigeria's economic fortunes, which have suffered from low world oil prices, and allowed the naira currency to float in mid-2016 in an attempt to tackle inflation and boost investment.
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There is a problem with artificial intelligence. | By Leo KelionTechnology desk editor
It can be amazing at churning through gigantic amounts of data to solve challenges that humans struggle with. But understanding how it makes its decisions is often very difficult to do, if not impossible.
That means when an AI model works it is not as easy as it should be to make further refinements, and when it exhibits odd behaviour it can be hard to fix.
But at an event in London this week, Google's cloud computing division pitched a new facility that it hopes will give it the edge on Microsoft and Amazon, which dominate the sector. Its name: Explainable AI.
To start with, it will give information about the performance and potential shortcomings of face- and object-detection models. But in time the firm intends to offer a wider set of insights to help make the "thinking" of AI algorithms less mysterious and therefore more trustworthy.
"Google is definitely the underdog behind Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure in terms of the cloud platform space, but for AI workloads I wouldn't say that's the case - particularly for retail clients," commented Philip Carter from the consultants IDC.
"There's a bit of an arms race around AI... and in some ways Google could be seen to be ahead of the other players."
Prof Andrew Moore leads Google Cloud's AI division.
He told the BBC the secret behind the breakthrough was "really cool fancy maths".
The transcript below has been edited for clarity and length:
Can you explain what led to Explainable AI?
One of the things which drives us crazy at Google is we often build really accurate machine learning models, but we have to understand why they're doing what they're doing. And in many of the large systems we built for our smartphones or for our search-ranking systems, or question-answering systems, we've internally worked hard to understand what's going on. Now we're releasing many of those tools for the external world to be able to explain the results of machine learning as well. The era of black box machine learning is behind us.
How do you go about doing that - it's not as though you can peer into a neural net and see why an input became an output?
The main question is to do these things called counterfactuals, where the neural network asks itself, for example, 'Suppose I hadn't been able to look at the shirt colour of the person walking into the store, would that have changed my estimate of how quickly they were walking?' By doing many counterfactuals, it gradually builds up a picture of what it is and isn't paying attention to when it's making a prediction.
This is really important, isn't it from a confidence point of view? If we're going to trust not just our businesses, but our lives to artificial intelligence algorithms, it's no good if, when things go wrong, we can't work out why.
Yes. It's really important for societal reasons and fairness reasons and safety reasons. But I will say that no self-respecting AI practitioner would ever release a safety-critical machine learning system without having additional guardrails on it beyond just having Explainable AI.
To be clear, are you saying Google has completely solved the black box problem, or just that you're shining a bit of light in there?
With the new Explainable AI tools we're able to help data scientists do strong diagnoses of what's going on. But we have not got to the point where there's a full explanation of what's happening. For example, many of the questions about whether one thing is causing something or correlated with something - those are closer to philosophical questions than things that we can purely use technology for.
One AI service you aren't offering clients is facial recognition. You've limited yourselves instead to letting clients detect but not recognise faces, with an exception made for those of celebrities. Microsoft and Amazon, by contrast, allow users to build more general facial recognition capabilities into their tools. Why is your approach different?
In general, within Google, we understood how important it is that artificial intelligence is applied responsibly. And so, our chief executive Sundar Pichai commissioned a set of a principles that we operate with. They include the fact that we should never be doing harm, and that we should be making sure that the decisions of the systems are unbiased, fair and accountable. As a result of this it does mean that we are very careful. And it does sometimes come across that we are reluctant to just release something and hope that it works because we subject everything to a battery of tests to make sure they are working in a way that's desirable.
Switching tack. Before you took on this role you did AI work for the US Department of Defense. And you joined soon after Google pulled out of a tie-up with the Pentagon to label drone footage - a decision you expressed concerns about. Do you think Google's decision to drop Project Maven was wrong?
That was before my time. So I'm not going to comment on that specific decision.
I will say that one of my roles is to serve on the United States Artificial Intelligence Congressional Commission on AI for national security. And myself, and many other folks throughout the industries understand that we technology providers do have an obligation to help protect countries and societies, as well as producing consumer products as well.
A couple of weeks ago, our chief legal counsel, Kent Walker, made some comments about Google's great desire to help out in aspects of national security which will make people safer.
But Google Cloud is ruling out work on weapon systems?
Google's AI principles say that they're not going to be working on offensive weapons systems.
So do you think that Google should be pursuing military or other national security contracts in the future?
I don't want to talk about any specific contracts. But for example, Google is actively helping out with a question of "deepfake" detection, which is this new fear that artificially constructed videos or images might become so realistic that they actually cause societal problems. And so we're partnering with a major government agency in the United States to help deal with that potential.
The decision to abandon Project Maven followed internal opposition to the effort from many Google employees. Do you agree with the view of others, including Microsoft president Brad Smith, that while it's worth listening to workers' concerns you also sometimes need to push back against employee activism?
One of the things I love about Google, and why I chose to return to Google to work is that it is full of lots of creative voices. And pretty much everything we do, including the design of the shape of buttons on a front-end system, we end up having massive internal arguments about. Eventually you do have to make a decision one way or the other. The idea of doing top-down management is completely out of Google's culture. But knowing that people are going to disagree and having leadership commit is also something that we are very clear that we do do.
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What now? | Laura KuenssbergPolitical editor@bbclaurakon Twitter
Theresa May has been granted a little breathing space. The EU has allowed a few more days to try to get her deal through the House of Commons.
But it's not the timetable that she chose.
And as things stand, the expectation that the compromise deal will get through is low.
And, more to the point, the government does not believe that it can hold off another attempt by a powerful cross-party group of MPs who are resolved to put Parliament forcibly in charge of the process to find alternatives.
Ministers are therefore today not just wondering about how to manage one last heave for the prime minister's deal, but what they should do next, when - odds on - the whole issue is in the hands of the Commons, not Number 10.
Within days, MPs will push for a series of votes on different versions of Brexit - the "Norway" model, another referendum, Labour's version of Brexit with a customs union, the list goes on.
But here's the dilemma.
Does Theresa May just wait for Parliament to do what one minister describes as "grab control of the order paper"?
Softer Brexit?
Or should they instead try to lead the process, forcing what another member of the cabinet described as a "fresh start", even though it seems "ludicrous" to be resetting the whole process in this way at this stage?
Some in the government believe the best choice is to take charge of this next stage - to lead the process as Parliament and the opposition parties try to find a new compromise.
Sounds like a no brainer.
But there is a real hesitation over whether the Labour frontbench are really interested in trying to find a compromise or will, ultimately, be too tempted by the political opportunity of pulling the rug from under the government at the very last minute.
And given that the majority of MPs are, theoretically, in favour of a softer Brexit than the one the prime minister has negotiated, could Theresa May really preside over a process that would end up there?
But if the government sits back and just lets Parliament get on with it, then Number 10 accepts becoming a passenger - entirely in the hands of the MPs whose behaviour the prime minister so reviled in that controversial address in Number 10 on Wednesday night.
Don't forget - for many Brexiteers in the Conservative Party, the idea of a softer Brexit than the one the prime minister has negotiated is nothing short of an abomination.
(That could, in a hypothetical world, mean that more of them are willing to back Theresa May's deal than currently expected - if it is the "hardest" brexit that is on offer).
So for Theresa May's survival as leader of the Conservative Party, there is a case, strange as it sounds, for her to hang back from leading the next phase.
If Parliament chooses a softer Brexit in the end, it could suit Mrs May not to have her fingerprints on it.
But is it really a tenable leadership strategy, choosing not to lead?
Choices running out
Brexit has done some very strange things to our political process. The reality is though, if Theresa May next week accepts the will of Parliament and it is "soft Brexit", the reaction from the Conservative Party could be explosive.
Frankly, the choices for Theresa May are running out.
Many Tories on all sides of the debate are deeply alarmed by how things have unravelled in the last few days.
One senior, influential, MP who has been studiously loyal to the prime minister is incandescent, saying that she has "angered all the people whose support she needed", and that "she is the most stubborn and ill-suited person for this job".
Another former minister suggests Theresa May's deal still could pass, but only if she tempts Labour rebels across with a promise of a referendum to give the public the chance to rubber stamp it, or "we'll have a new PM with a new plan", and maybe soon.
'Super dangerous'
One current member of the government says "only Number Ten can't see that she is on her way out".
Another minister says the situation is "super dangerous".
All of the fundamental factors that have preserved her so far remain - there is no obvious alternative plan that is certain to get a majority of MPs on side.
There is no obvious leader in waiting that the whole Conservative Party would gladly choose. The Labour Party have their own battles with their own divisions over Brexit.
The traditional claim of TINA - There Is No Alternative - has helped Theresa May hang on.
But now an alternative to her deal is likely to be forced upon her, one that could make her leadership impossible to maintain.
Theresa May arrives back in Number 10 today having won a little bit of extra time, but she has less and less space to breathe.
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Eat less and you will lose weight. | By Michelle RobertsHealth reporter, BBC News
This simple piece of advice is true, but it's one that many of us struggle to follow.
It is easy to blame a lack of willpower or a penchant for sugary, fat-laden snacks. And often weight does pile back on because people revert to their old way of eating too much of the wrong foods.
But researchers say the reason so many of us relapse and fail on diets is because we have unrealistic expectations.
And this is not our fault but that of experts, because the advice they give us is flawed.
Long slog
Most people start dieting with the notion that they will start to see results fast.
Experts tell us that if we cut around 500 calories from our daily diet, or burn them off exercising, then we can expect to lose 1lb (0.5kg) in weight every week.
The British Dietetics Association, the NHS and the American Dietetic Association all say losing weight at this rate is "about right" and that if you stick at it for 12 months, for example, you will shed about 52 lb (26kg).
But US researchers from the National Institutes for Health say this is a gross overestimation because the calculation used is flawed.
They say it takes much longer to lose the weight - around three years to be precise, according to their work published in The Lancet.
For example, a year of dieting will result in only half of the amount of weight loss that experts currently predict.
Dr Kevin Hall and colleagues say this explains why many of us give up within months, because we expect unrealistic results that cannot be achieved.
Studies of outpatient weight loss programmes show most dieters peak at six months with the pounds starting to creep back on after this.
Some, incorrectly, attribute this to the body getting used to having less food and metabolism slowing down. The dieter then feels that the regime is no longer working and often gives up altogether.
Alternatively, as the slimmer begins to see the weight falling off in the early months they are so pleased with their achievement that they begin to relax and the diet slips. But because weight loss is slow there is a lag phase where weight continues to drop even though the person is now eating more. The dieter then mistakenly concludes that they don't need to be so rigid with their diet in order to lose weight.
But eventually, the weight will catch up with them and they may well find they are now heavier than they were when they first started the diet.
Dr Hall explains: "The slow timescale for weight change is responsible for the gradual weight regain over many years despite the fact that the original lifestyle was resumed within the first year.
"Studies show that somewhere between 50% and 80% of dieters will put weight back on."
He says professionals need to change the advice that they give to dieters so they don't fall into this trap.
"If you can give a realistic picture, that can inform people and help them make choices."
Dr Hall says the error occurs because the "500 calorie-cut a day" sum fails to take account of how metabolism changes as we diet.
The mathematic equation relies on the assumption that one pound of fat contains 3,500 calories, so to lose one pound a week a person should consume approximately 3,500 fewer calories a week, or 500 fewer calories a day.
But in fact, weight loss is not this steady.
Natural fluctuations
Using knowledge about how the human body responds to changes of diet and physical activity, Dr Hall's team have created a computer program that they say gives a more realistic and reliable prediction of weight loss.
Their calculations reflect the fact that one person may lose weight faster or slower than another, even when they eat the same diet and do the same exercise.
For example, heavier people can expect greater weight change with the same change in diet, but it will take them longer to reach a stable body weight than people carrying less fat.
Plus the body adapts rapidly to a reduced calorie diet, regardless of the type of food eliminated to get this reduction.
This means that all diets with similarly reduced energy content will have the same effect in the short term, whether the food cut out is fat or sugary carbohydrates.
Dr Hall said: "We tested it on about 100 people and it gave a good fit. It was pretty accurate, whereas the old rule does not fall anywhere near.
"This means we can use it to make realistic predictions.
"The rough rule of thumb to go by is 10 calories per day per pound. And it takes a year to lose half of the excess weight and three years to get to 95%."
It's not clear why the advice was adopted in the first place.
Helen Bond, from the British Dietetic Association, admitted: "We all recommend it - it's what we are taught. But I don't know what the scientific evidence for it is.
"It stems from how much energy it takes to burn fat. A lot of diets are not proven by science."
She said some dieters might find it depressing to be told that it takes far longer to get weight down than previously thought.
"It's not very motivating to tell someone that if they cut their intake by 10 calories a day every day for the next three years they will lose a pound of weight.
"But saying 'cut out your daily habit of a 250-calorie chocolate bar and you will lose about 25 pounds and, if you stick at it, the weight will stay off' - that is."
However, Dr Hall says the computer model also shows how people can achieve more rapid weight loss if that is what they desire.
For example, someone could follow a very strict diet for the first year to get rid of a large bulk of their excess weight and then switch to a less restrictive diet to continue and maintain the weight loss. Adding in extra exercise will also have an impact.
At the end of the day, it still boils down to willpower. There is no quick fix to dieting and if you want it to work you need to stick at it, says Dr Hall.
A healthy diet is for life, not just post-Christmas.
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It's just a debate. | Mark D'ArcyParliamentary correspondent
The Liaison Committee debate on the customs union on Thursday will not be decisive or apocalyptic.
Nor will it force ministers to change their Brexit policy.
It is a prelude, not a finale, grand or otherwise.
It will be low key in a number of ways. First, in a rather unfortunate diary clash, the Brexit select committee members are due to be in Berlin, talking to the German government. Awks, because their chair, Hilary Benn is one of the key signatories to the motion, and a number of other key Commons figures will have to be elsewhere.
And government is not contesting the motion very hard. Tory MPs are being "encouraged" to hit the campaign trail in the local elections.... which suggests ministers do not intend to rise to the bait and want the debate to bellyflop.
But the debate does crystallise an interesting question. Can Parliament, and more particularly the Commons, seize the wheel and force ministers down a different route in the Brexit negotiations?
The motion due for debate does not even attempt to do that. Boiled down, it says that says that "a" customs union with the EU would be a jolly good idea and "therefore calls on the government" to make a CU one of its objectives in the Brexit talks.
So it is an attempt to express an opinion on the conduct of the talks, not a direct mandate on ministers.
There are, however, a couple of attempts in the pipeline to instruct ministers negotiate a CU; the Lords passed an amendment to the EU (Withdrawal) Bill, last week to require the government to report to both Houses by 31 October 2018 regarding the steps taken to negotiate continued participation of the UK in a customs union with the EU, before the European Communities Act 1972 can be repealed.
This just means they have to say what they did, so it's not particularly strong and the government could, at a pinch, simply live with that requirement... and simply trot into Parliament and say "well, we tried..."
Then, there are the rather tougher amendments to the Trade Bill, proposed by Tory rebels, which attempt to add a CU to the UK's negotiating objectives. Given the number of Conservative signatories on both New Clause 1 and New Clause 5, which are variations on this theme, the government has cause to fear for its majority when they are debated.
But what does passing any of them actually mean?
It is, as Brexit Minister Steve Baker remarked to the Lords Constitution Committee last week, a novel concept that Parliament should seek to drive an international negotiation this way; but suppose it did?
Ministers could be told to negotiate for something, but could they be made to mean it? Could Theresa May or David Davis satisfy the terms of the new clauses with by telling their EU opposite numbers that Parliament voted for this, while giving an exaggerated wink and crossing their fingers? The amendments might have the force of law, but there is no provision to punish ministers who defy or ignore them.
Maybe the real significance of a vote to pass these amendments would be if it signalled that a majority in the Commons was ready to insist on a customs union, come the "meaningful vote" on the Brexit deal, due in the autumn.
That would be a huge development, and would pose a huge problem for the Cabinet.
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A chronology of key events:
| The Horn of Africa has been home to Somalis since ancient times.
13th-17th centuries - Ajuran Sultanate dominates much of the Horn of Africa before collapsing into rival regional sultanates.
1875 - Egypt occupies towns on Somali coast and parts of the interior.
1860s - France acquires foothold on the Somali coast, later to become Djibouti.
1887 - Britain proclaims protectorate over Somaliland.
1888 - Anglo-French agreement defines boundary between Somali possessions of the two countries.
1889 - Italy sets up a protectorate in central Somalia, later consolidated with territory in the south ceded by the sultan of Zanzibar.
1925 - Territory east of the Jubba river detached from Kenya to become the westernmost part of the Italian protectorate.
1936 - Italian Somaliland combined with Somali-speaking parts of Ethiopia to form a province of Italian East Africa.
1940 - Italians occupy British Somaliland.
1941 - British occupy Italian Somalia.
Independence
1950 - Italian Somaliland becomes a UN trust territory under Italian control.
1956 - Italian Somaliland renamed Somalia and granted internal autonomy.
1960 - British and Italian parts of Somalia become independent, merge and form the United Republic of Somalia; Aden Abdullah Osman Daar elected president.
1963 - Border dispute with Kenya; diplomatic relations with Britain broken until 1968.
1964 - Border dispute with Ethiopia erupts into hostilities.
1967 - Abdi Rashid Ali Shermarke beats Aden Abdullah Osman Daar in elections for president.
Drought and war
1969 - Muhammad Siad Barre assumes power in coup after Shermarke is assassinated.
1970 - Barre declares Somalia a socialist state and nationalises most of the economy.
1974 - Somalia joins the Arab League.
1974-75 - Severe drought causes widespread starvation.
1977 - Somalia invades the Somali-inhabited Ogaden region of Ethiopia.
1978 - Somali forces pushed out of Ogaden with the help of Soviet advisers and Cuban troops. Barre expels Soviet advisers and gains support of United States.
1981 - Opposition to Barre's regime begins to emerge after he excludes members of the Mijertyn and Isaq clans from government positions, which are filled with people from his own Marehan clan.
1988 - Peace accord with Ethiopia.
1991 - Mohamed Siad Barre is ousted. Power struggle between clan warlords kills or wounds thousands of civilians.
Somaliland breaks away
1991 - Former British protectorate of Somaliland declares unilateral independence.
1992 - US Marines land near Mogadishu ahead of a UN peacekeeping force sent to restore order and safeguard relief supplies.
1993 - US Army Rangers are killed when Somali militias shoot down two US helicopters in Mogadishu and a battle ensues. Hundreds of Somalis die. US mission formally ends in March 1994.
1995 - UN peacekeepers leave, having failed to achieve their mission.
1996 August - Warlord Mohamed Farah Aideed dies of wounds and is succeeded by his son, Hussein.
Puntland autonomy
1998 - Puntland region declares autonomy.
2000 August - Clan leaders and senior figures meeting in Djibouti elect Abdulkassim Salat Hassan president of Somalia.
2000 October - Hassan and his newly-appointed prime minister, Ali Khalif Gelayadh, arrive in Mogadishu to heroes' welcomes. Gelayadh announces his government, the first in the country since 1991.
2001 April - Somali warlords, backed by Ethiopia, decline to support transitional administration.
2004 August - In 14th attempt since 1991 to restore central government, a new transitional parliament inaugurated at ceremony in Kenya. In October the body elects Abdullahi Yusuf as president.
2004 December - Tsunami off Indonesia displaces 10,000s on Somali coast.
2005 February-June - Somali government begins returning home from exile in Kenya, but there are bitter divisions over where in Somalia the new parliament should sit.
2005 November - Prime Minister Ali Mohammed Ghedi survives an assassination attempt in Mogadishu.
Islamist advance
2006 February - Transitional parliament meets in central town of Baidoa for the first time since it was formed in 2004.
2006 March-May - Scores of people are killed and hundreds are injured during fierce fighting between rival militias in Mogadishu. Worst violence in almost decade.
2006 June-July - Militias loyal to the Union of Islamic Courts take Mogadishu and other parts of south after defeating clan warlords.
Ethiopian troops enter Somalia.
2006 July-August - Mogadishu's air and seaports are re-opened for the first time since 1995.
2006 September - Transitional government and Islamic Courts begin peace talks in Khartoum.
Somalia's first known suicide bombing targets President Yusuf outside parliament in Baidoa.
Islamists retreat
2006 December - Ethiopian and transitional government put Islamists to flight, capturing Mogadishu.
2007 January - Islamists abandon their last stronghold, the southern port of Kismayo.
President Abdullahi Yusuf enters Mogadishu for the first time since taking office in 2004.
Air strikes in south against al-Qaeda figures are first direct US military intervention in Somalia since 1993.
2007 March - African Union troops land in Mogadishu amid pitched battles between Islamist insurgents and government forces backed by Ethiopian troops, after UN Security Council authorised six-month peacekeeping mission.
Piracy concerns
2008 May - The UN Security Council allows countries to send warships to Somalia's territorial waters to tackle pirates.
2009 January - Ethiopia completes withdrawal of troops, announced the previous year, and Al-Shabab capture Baidoa, formerly a key government stronghold.
Meeting in Djibouti, parliament elects moderate Islamist Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed president, extends transitional government's mandate for another two years.
Al-Shabab highpoint
2009 May - Islamist insurgents launch onslaught on Mogadishu and advance in the south.
2009 October - Al-Shabab recaptures the southern port of Kismayo after defeating the rival Hizbul-Islam militia.
2010-12 - Famine kills almost 260,000, the UN says.
2010 January - UN World Food Programme withdraws from Al-Shabab areas of southern Somalia after threats to lives of its staff.
2010 February - Al-Shabab formally declares alliance with al-Qaeda, begins to concentrate troops for a major offensive to capture the capital.
2011 January - Pirate attacks on ships worldwide hit seven-year high in 2010, with Somali pirates accounting for 49 of 52 ships seized.
2011 July - UN formally declares famine in three regions of Somalia. Al-Shabab partially lifts ban on foreign aid agencies in south, and UN airlifts its first aid consignment in five years to Mogadishu.
Al-Shabab pulls out of Mogadishu in what it calls "tactical move".
Kenyan intervention
2011 October - Kenyan troops enter Somalia to attack rebels they accuse of being behind several kidnappings of foreigners on Kenyan soil.
American military begins flying drone aircraft from a base in Ethiopia, Ethiopian troops return to central town of Guriel.
2012 February-May - Al-Shabab loses key towsn of Baidoa and Afgoye to Kenyan, African Union and Somali government forces.
New parliament, president
2012 August - Somalia's first formal parliament in more than 20 years is sworn in at Mogadishu airport, ending eight-year transitional period. Pro-government forces capture the port of Merca south of Mogadishu from Al-Shabab.
2012 September - MPs in Mogadishu elect academic and civic activist Hassan Sheikh Mohamud president over the incumbent Sharif Sheikh Ahmed. First presidential election in Somalia since 1967.
2012 October - African Union and government forces recapture Kismayo, the last major city held by Al-Shabab and the country's second-largest port, and the town of Wanla Weyn northwest of Mogadishu.
2013 January - US recognises Somalia's government for the first time since 1991.
2013 June - Veteran Al-Shabab leader Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys is taken into custody by government troops after he is ousted by more extreme Al-Shabab figure Ahmed Abdi Godane.
Spike in violence with various attacks by Al-Shabab, including on presidential palace and UN compound in Mogadishu.
2013 September - International donors promise 2.4 billion dollars in reconstruction aid in three-year ''New Deal''.
Shabab attacks Kenya
2013 September - Al-Shabab seize shopping centre and kill 60 people in Kenyan capital Nairobi, saying it is retaliation for Kenya's military involvement in Somalia.
2014 May - Al-Shabab says it carried out a bomb attack on a restaurant in Djibouti, saying the country is used as a launch pad to strike Muslims.
2014 June - Al-Shabab claims two attacks on the Kenyan coast which kill more than 60, saying operations against Kenya would continue.
2014 September - Al-Shabab leader Ahmed Abdi Godane killed in US drone strike. Government offers 2 million dollar bounty for his successor, Ahmad Omar.
2014 November - Government launches country's first postal service in more than two decades. Mogadishu's first ever cash withdrawal machine installed in a hotel.
2014 November-December - Al Shabab carry out mass killings in north-east Kenya, including on a bus and a camp of quarry workers.
2015 April - Al-Shabab claim responsibility for killing 148 people, mainly Christian students, at Garissa University College in northern Kenya.Kenya carries out air raids on Al-Shabab bases in Somalia in retaliation.
2015 May - US Secretary of State John Kerry pays brief visit to Mogadishu, the first officeholder to do so, a few weeks after Al-Shabab raid government quarter of the city and kill 17 people.
2016 February - African Union leaders agree on need for more funding and support for their military presence in Somalia after weeks of increased Al-Shabab attacks on public spaces and pro-government troops. Government and African Union troops recapture southern port of Merca that Al-Shabab briefly seized.
2016 November - Leaders of two Somali regions, Puntland and Galmudug, agree to respect a ceasefire in the disputed city of Galkayo. Fighting in the city reportedly displaced 90,000.
2017 February - Parliament elects former prime minister Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, known as Farmajo, as president. Al-Shabab threatens to target anyone collaborating with him.
2017 March - Pirates seize tanker off coast of Puntland in the first hijacking of a large vessel in the region since 2012.
2017 May - President Mohamed at London conference calls for lifting of arms embargo to help defeat al-Shabab. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres says conditions are now in place in Somalia for it to become a success story.
2017 October - Double truck bombing kills 350 people in Mogadishu. Al-Shabaab is prime suspect.
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Croatia is jubilant. | By Bethany BellBBC News, Zagreb
Right before the end of the game, a young man in a red and white Croatia football shirt rushed up to me at the fan zone in central Zagreb.
"If we win, I'm going to jump into that fountain," he said.
Seconds later, as huge victory cheers filled the square, he plunged in, followed by dozens of others, shouting and splashing with joy.
People set off fireworks and flares.
"England is going home - and we are going to the final!" shouted a girl with red and white checks painted on her face. "We are such a small country, but we can play football!"
"Nobody expected us to win," Marko cried. "The English media all week were making fun of us, saying that we don't have a chance, but it showed in the field that quality reigned supreme.
"In every single game, they play with 100% of their hearts. It's everything to us."
This is Croatia's moment. It's a country of just over 4 million people, that has produced a team of brilliant players.
As he drank beer, Daniel told me it was very significant for his country.
"Croatians are very proud. The last time we got to the semi-finals in a World Cup was in 1998, just after the war and independence. We show we can win. It's more important for a small country."
Another fan was more philosophical. "It's an escape for people," he said. "There are no jobs, no money. The politicians are lining their pockets. But tonight people are happy. It makes them forget their problems for a short time."
The players have been feted as national heroes.
When the team qualified for the quarter-finals, the Croatian President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic paid them a visit in their dressing room, stepping over their kit, to hug several of the players in various states of undress.
She later released video footage of her, resplendent in a football shirt, jumping up and down with the players.
Croatia's performance in the World Cup has helped shift the spotlight from the dark cloud of corruption scandals surrounding football in this country and murky management within the Croatian football federation.
Croatia has been repeatedly punished by Fifa and Uefa over unruly fans known for throwing flares at matches and chanting fascist slogans.
And in March, Croatia's captain, Luka Modric, was charged with perjury.
Prosecutors say the Real Madrid midfielder gave false testimony during the trial of one of the most powerful figures in Croatian football, the former head of Dinamo Zagreb, Zdravko Mamic, in a multi-million-euro corruption case. Mamic, who was sentenced to six and a half years in prison, is currently in hiding in Bosnia.
Modric's lawyer told the BBC that he had done nothing wrong and hoped he would not face trial for perjury after the World Cup.
Liverpool defender Dejan Lovren is also being investigated but has not been charged.
The more the team wins, the more the fans are likely to forgive - but the problems remain.
Back at the beer tent, Daniel told me his country would have to deal with the corruption issues, "but not today."
"After this, we must speak about the problems, but today it is more important to talk about Croatia."
"It's incredible," one of the fans shouted. "I really can't believe it. We're in the finals. It's coming to our home!"
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A chronology of key events:
| c. AD 250-900 Classical Maya city states flourish in the far south of modern-day Mexico, as well as in neighbouring Guatemala and Belize, before suffering a mysterious collapse.
c. AD 0-500 - Major cultural and religious centre of Teotihuacán flourishes. Thought to have been one of the world's largest cities at the time, but little is known about its ethnic and political nature.
6th-7th century - Influx of new peoples into central Mexico from the north, including speakers of Nahuatl.
800-1000 - High point of the Toltec culture, centred on the city of Tula, in modern-day Hidalgo province.
10th-16th centuries - Revitalised Maya civilisation blossoms in the northern Yucatan peninsula, creating major cities such as Chichen Itza and Uxmal.
1428-1521 - The latest of a long line of indigenous civilisations, the Aztec Empire - an alliance of Nahuatl-speaking city states led by Tenochtitlan - establishes hegemony over much of central Mexico.
Spanish conquest
1519 - Small Spanish army led by Hernan Cortes lands at Veracruz, marking the start of Spain's conquest of Mexico.
1521 - Allied with local anti-Aztec forces, Cortes' men capture the capital Tenochtitlan (modern-day Mexico City).
1521-1820 - Mexico forms part of the Viceroyalty of New Spain.
Independence
1810-21 - War of Independence ends with the creation of the short-living Mexican Empire, which includes Central America to the southern border of modern-day Costa Rica, as well as what is now the southwestern US.
1824 - Mexico becomes a federal republic. Central American provinces secede, becoming Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Costa Rica.
The new Mexican state is marked by tension between the conservative Spanish-origin landowning elite and the largely indigenous landless minority, resulting in instability and frequent armed conflict.
1836 - Former province of Texas, by now increasingly populated by English-speaking Americans, secedes after a war, going on to join the United States nine years later.
1846-8 - Mexican-American War ends with Mexico being forced to sell its northern provinces (including modern-day California, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona and Utah) to the US.
1855-72 - "La Reforma" period, characterised by liberal reforms limiting the power and landholdings of the Catholic Church.
1864-7 - Archduke Maximilian of Austria is installed as emperor by France and conservative landowners, but is toppled and executed by Republican rebels.
1876-1911 - Porfirio Diaz's 35-year-long dictatorship brings stability, modernisation and economic growth, but at the price of political repression.
Revolution
1910-1920 - Mexican Revolution ends the Porfirio Diaz dictatorship and establishes constitutional government.
1913-14 - The liberal Francisco Madero introduces land reform and labour legislation before being assassinated. Victoriano Huerta seizes power. Political unrest continues with Emiliano Zapata leading a peasant revolt in the south.
1916-17 - Inconclusive US incursion against guerrilla leader Francisco "Pancho" Villa.
1920 - President Venustiano Carranza is murdered, followed by a decade of instability.
Institutional Revolutionary Party rule
1929 - Former president Plutarco Elias Calles forms what later becomes the Institutional Revolutionary Party(PRI), which dominates government for 71 years.
1934 - President Lazaro Cardenas begins programme of oil nationalisation, land reform and industrial expansion.
1960s - Unrest amongst peasants and labourers over unequal wealth distribution is suppressed.
1968 - Student demonstration in Mexico City during the Olympic Games is fired on by security forces. Hundreds of protesters are killed or wounded. The extent of the violence shocks the country.
Oil discovery
1976 - Huge offshore oil reserves discovered; the Cantarell field becomes the mainstay of Mexico's oil production.
1985 - Earthquake in Mexico City kills thousands and makes many more homeless.
1993 - Parliament ratifies the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) with the US and Canada.
Chiapas rebellion
1994 - A guerrilla rebellion in Chiapas by the Zapatista National Liberation Army is brutally suppressed by government troops. The government and Zapatistas agree on greater autonomy for the indigenous Mayans of Chiapas the following year.
1996 - The insurgency in the south escalates as the leftist Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR) attacks government troops.
1997 - The PRI suffers heavy losses in elections and loses its overall majority in the lower house of parliament for the first time since 1929.
Fox election victory
2000 July - Vicente Fox of the conservative Alliance for Change wins presidential elections, the first opposition candidate ever to do so. Parliamentary elections see the Alliance emerge as the strongest party, narrowly beating the PRI
2002 June - Millions of secret security files are released, shedding light on the repression of hundreds of political activists in the 1960s and 1970s.
2006 July - Conservative candidate Felipe Calderon is declared the winner of presidential elections with a razor-thin majority over his leftist rival, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
War on drugs
2006 December - A new federal police force is created to tackle drugs cartels; thousands of troops are deployed in the western state of Michoacan as part of a major anti-drug trafficking drive.
2007 October - Heavy rains flood nearly the entire southern state of Tabasco. Some 500,000 are made homeless in one of the country's worst natural disasters.
2009 March - Army troops enter Ciudad Juarez, on the border with the US, as open warfare erupts between rival drug gangs.
2012 July - The Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) candidate Enrique Pena Nieto wins presidential election.
2013 July - Miguel Angel Trevino Morales, head of the brutal Zetas drugs cartel, is arrested in the highest-profile arrest since President Pena Nieto adopted a policy of targeting local bosses rather than big names.
2014 August - Mexico's Congress approves sweeping reforms to the country's energy sector that will open the market to foreign oil firms and strip state-owned energy group Pemex of the monopoly it has held since nationalisation in 1938.
2018 October - The US, Canada and Mexico reach a new trade deal - the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) - to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta).
2018 - Left-wing former mayor of Mexico City, Andres Manuel López Obrador, is inaugurated president after winning an overwhelming victory in the July presidential election.
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And so the lobbying begins. | Tom EdwardsTransport correspondent, London@BBCTomEdwardson Twitter
Today the mayor is in Northern Ireland showing off the new chassis production line for the 'New Bus for London', a modern design based on the old Routemaster which has prototypes running on two routes.
He's using it to show that investment in London's transport supports jobs across the UK.
Why?
Discussions are now going on between the Treasury and Transport for London (TfL) about next year's spending settlement. TfL wants sustained investment over five years of £1.8bn a year.
This is a rather odd cycle.
London jobs
Most of the time, parts of TfL boast about punctuality times improving along with customer satisfaction.
Then, as soon as the funding review rears its head, it'll happily show you some of the most outdated and crumbling infrastructure you are ever likely to see, to prove it needs more money.
The argument being made now is about the supply chain and how investment in London's transport maintains jobs.
This is a breakdown of the five biggest procurements that TfL has given me:
It also says: "Investment in London's transport network supports 40,000 jobs in the UK supply chain, with a further 19,000 supported in the supply chain within London. "
Of course not every procurement from TfL is from the UK - some of the mayor's flagship projects aren't.
The bike hire scheme comes from Canada and TfL says that cost £100m to set up.
The cable car (£45m) over the Thames comes from Austria.
The jobs argument is being made along with the infrastructure argument - that building in London creates construction jobs here.
Without £1.8bn a year, TfL says it will have to cut or mothball the Piccadilly line upgrades, new Jubilee line trains and road schemes.
That will have a direct impact on hundreds of thousands of Londoners.
City Hall also wants to make it clear transport investments aren't just about transport, they are also about how transport cash can unlock and regenerate whole areas with housing.
TfL savings
Nonetheless, efficiency savings at TfL will still be big. TfL says: "In terms of savings we have already secured £9.8bn in savings (which will be delivered by 2017/18) and we have committed to saving a further £5bn by 2021/22."
Here are some savings made so far:
It's difficult to see how that won't include job losses and with those large efficiencies there will be more emphasis on TfL to make money commercially.
That'll mean optimising advertising spaces, more office developments and station retail developments.
The view from the mayor's critics is that he paid a premium on too many schemes - like the new bus - and hasn't offered value for money.
The Lib Dems on the London Assembly point to the fact that in the mayor's 2012 transport manifesto he said the new bus would "not cost more than an existing hybrid bus".
In fact, each one will cost £50,000 more.
The big question is will that affect the view from the Treasury?
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Brussels was abuzz on Monday. | Katya AdlerEurope editor@BBCkatyaadleron Twitter
And I don't get to say that very often.
On the one hand, eurocrats were hurried - in wind and rain - into EU courtyards to stand in photo-op-ready groups to form the number 60.
(It's the EU's 60th birthday celebration this Saturday.)
And on the other - after months of cajoling, thinly-veiled frustration and angst from Brussels - the UK government finally made clear the date it will officially trigger the Brexit process.
Next Wednesday.
But whereas Saturday really is a huge deal for the EU - marking decades of togetherness at a time when the union is very much under threat from populist nationalism across the EU, inequality and discord in the eurozone, migration complications and Brexit itself, of course - next Wednesday, while an historic day in the UK, will not play out so big this side of the Channel.
There is a determination here that Brexit must no longer be allowed to dominate and overshadow EU politics as it has done since way before the UK referendum even.
One high-level source told me that after Brussels received Britain's formal notification of its intention to leave, Brexit would immediately be downgraded to one of many EU issues to be dealt with, rather than The Big Thing.
"There will be no major political apocalyptic show," he assured me.
But of course, the underlying EU fear remains that if a Brexit deal is too sweet for the UK, other countries may be inspired to also walk out the door.
Brussels officials are grateful that Theresa May did not trigger Article 50 this week, so close to the EU's birthday bash.
The tone there will be resolutely upbeat, rather than focused on one of its key members leaving the club.
As for the what-happens-next with Brexit, the rule in Brussels is: don't expect too much too fast. Ever.
The remaining 27 EU leaders, or at least their teams, began getting diaries together on Monday.
To fix a date (expected in around five or six weeks) for that all-important summit when they'll agree their red lines and guidelines for Brexit negotiations.
The European Commission will lead the UK talks from the EU side - but all the initial meetings will be about who will meet, when, in which country, discussing what and in which order.
Most probably little of substance will be achieved before the autumn.
The EU prefers to get the key elections coming up in big-hitters France and Germany out the way first.
But any delay is painful for the UK.
The Article 50 timer is set for two years and the clock starts ticking next Wednesday.
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Head of state: Pope Francis
| Cardinals elected the first Latin American pope in March 2013, choosing Cardinal Archbishop Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires to succeed Pope Benedict XVI, who had resigned over ill-health after a reign of eight years
At 76 he was only two years younger than Benedict at the time of his election, confounding expectations that the cardinals would opt for a younger candidate to lead the Catholic Church through the many challenges it faces.
Moreover, he has only one lung, which raised doubts about his stamina in this demanding post.
He had broad appeal in the College of Cardinals, being conservative on homosexuality but liberal on such social issues as poverty and inequality.
He is also the first pope from the Jesuit order of priests, who normally eschew promotion through the hierarchy to concentrate on scholarly and missionary work.
As head of the Jesuits in his native Argentina in the 1970s, he had to deal with the right-wing military junta that ruled in 1976-1982. He was criticised by some for allegedly failing to do enough to help victims of repression - including two members of his own order.
His defenders insist that he did much to counter the generals behind the scenes.
As pope, he made a bold start in addressing enduring scandals over clerical sex abuse and alleged corruption in the Vatican itself. He has demanded reform of the Curia - the top layer of the Church's bureaucracy - and has set up an advisory panel of senior churchmen from every continent tasked with drawing up a new Vatican constitution.
In November 2013 his first formal exhortation proposed wider consultation within the Church and condemned the world financial system, but said nothing new on the vexed questions of abortion, sexuality or the male-only priesthood.
In March 2014, after the UN criticised the Vatican for failing to stamp out child abuse and for allowing cover-ups, Pope Francis insisted that no other public institution had acted with greater transparency in this area.
But in his pre-Christmas address to cardinals in December 2014, he sharply criticised the slow pace of change within the Vatican bureaucracy, complaining that the Curia was afflicted with "spiritual Alzheimer's" and was deliberately frustrating all attempts to reform it.
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"Does this post contain hate speech?" | That is the message that thousands of Facebook users have reported seeing on their news feeds.
It seems to be only US-based users that can see the question, which is appearing under every post on their Facebook page.
While some have criticised the social media giant for the move, others are calling it a bug and pointing out the more unusual places where they have seen it appear.
A Facebook spokesperson said they were unable to comment at this time.
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If users click "yes" to respond that the post does contain hate speech, they are presented with four options for feedback.
These options are "hate speech", "test p1", "test p2" and "test p3", prompting some people to suggest that the form "clearly wasn't supposed" to appear on Facebook in its current form.
Yet the hate speech button was criticised as suppression by some, with American writer Matt Walsh calling it an intentional move by Facebook to remove "conservative content".
This is in light of accusations from Republican congressman Steve Scalise that Facebook's algorithm was discriminating against conservative news and content in favour of liberal posts.
And Lebanese-American journalist Brigitte Gabriel labelled it an attempt by Facebook to "censor" her account.
But as others noticed the button appearing on all of the posts in their timeline, people began to share the funniest place they had seen the button appear.
Such places include posts about local churches, articles about Donald Trump, and even pictures which show the weather forecast.
And Washington Post journalist Gene Park shared this suggestion that a photo of a puppy might be somehow hateful.
This comes as Facebook hosts its biggest event ever, with 5,000 developers flying in from around the world for the F8 developer conference on May 1-2.
This prompted social media journalist Matt Navarra to joke that even Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg was not exempt from the hate speech button.
By Tom Gerken, UGC & Social News
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Coronavirus misinformation is flooding the internet. | By Flora Carmichael and Marianna SpringBBC Trending
A parliamentary sub-committee is asking members of the public to submit examples. The committee has particularly requested submissions of disinformation spread in private groups and closed apps such as WhatsApp - the deadline is Monday.
Meanwhile, experts are calling on the public to practise "information hygiene". So what can you do to stop the spread of bad information online?
1. Stop and think
You want to help family and friends and keep them in the loop. So when you receive fresh advice - whether by email, WhatsApp, Facebook or Twitter - you might quickly forward it on to them.
But experts say the number one thing you can do to halt misinformation is to simply stop and think.
If you have any doubts, pause, and check it out further.
2. Check your source
Before you forward it on, ask some basic questions about where the information comes from.
It's a big red flag if the source is "a friend of a friend" or "my aunt's colleague's neighbour".
"The most reliable sources of information remain public health bodies like the NHS, the World Health Organisation, or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the USA." says Claire Milne, deputy editor of UK-based fact-checking organisation Full Fact.
Experts are not infallible. But they are much more reliable than a stranger's distant relative on WhatsApp.
3. Could it be a fake?
Appearances can be deceptive.
It is possible to impersonate official accounts and authorities, including BBC News and the government. Screenshots can also be changed to make it look like information has come from a trusted public body.
Check known and verified accounts and websites. If you can't easily find the information, it might be a hoax. And if a post, video or a link looks fishy - it probably is.
Capital letters and mismatched fonts are something fact-checkers use as an indicator a post might be misleading, according to Claire Milne from Full Fact.
4. Unsure whether it's true? Don't share
Don't forward things on "just in case" they might be true. You might be doing more harm than good.
Often we post things into places where we know there are experts - like doctors or medical professionals. That might be OK, but make sure you're very clear about your doubts. And beware - that photo or text you share might later be stripped of its context.
5. Check each fact, individually
When you get sent long lists of advice, it's easy to believe everything in them just because you know for certain that one of the tips (say, about hand washing) is true.
But that's not always the case. Don't assume that every piece of information in a post is true simply because you know that one part of the message is definitely correct.
6. Beware emotional posts
It's the stuff that gets us fearful, angry, anxious, or joyful that tends to really go viral.
"Fear is one of the biggest drivers that allows misinformation to thrive," says Claire Wardle of First Draft, an organisation that helps journalists tackle online misinformation.
Urgent calls for action are designed to ramp up anxiety - so be careful.
"People want to help their loved ones stay safe, so when they see 'Tips for preventing the virus!' or 'Take this health supplement!' people want to do whatever they can to help," she says.
7. Think about biases
Are you sharing something because you know it's true - or just because you agree with it?
Carl Miller, research director of the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media at think tank Demos, says we're more likely to share posts that reinforce our existing beliefs.
"It's when we're angrily nodding our head that we're most vulnerable," he says. "That's when, above everything else, we just need to slow down everything that we do online."
Have you seen misleading information - or something you have doubts about? Email us.
With additional reporting from BBC Monitoring
Learn more about sifting through fact and fiction online:
Follow BBC Trending on Twitter @BBCtrending, find us on Facebook or subscribe to the BBC Trending podcast. All our stories are at bbc.com/trending.
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"It's just fantastic. | By Victoria GillScience reporter, BBC News
"These animals were taken from Africa decades ago to display to the public [in European zoos] and now have a real conservation role in Rwanda," Mark Pilgrim, Chester Zoo's chief executive says proudly.
He is summing up the significance of the largest transportation of rhinos from Europe to Africa to ever happen.
It culminated on Monday as five zoo-born eastern black rhinos were released in the vast Akagera National Park.
The three females and two male rhinos, aged between two and nine years old, came from Flamingo Land in Yorkshire, the Czech Republic's Dvur Kralove safari park and Ree Park Safari in Denmark.
The 6,000km (3,700 miles) journey began at Dvur Kralove - where the animals have been gathered to be prepared for the trip since late last year - and concluded as each animal stepped out of its custom-made transport crate and into a large, temporary enclosure in the 1,000 sq km park.
They will remain in the enclosure, known as a boma, for several months until vets and wildlife experts, who stay in a nearby camp, are happy that they have settled and are ready for life in the wild.
Rhino dating game
The animals' journey to Akagera, via a flight from Prague to the Rwandan capital of Kigali, took around 30 hours. But the project to bring these animals back to Africa began years ago.
The European Association of Zoos and Aquaria has co-ordinated what Dr Pilgrim described as a huge "rhino dating game" and it is something he has been running.
"All the members signed up to move animals around, so we can match the most compatible pairs for breeding," he said.
"We have 25 [zoos and parks] that hold black rhinos and for the last 12 years, people have moved rhinos around the continent to make the breeding programme work."
This has been so successful that almost 10% of the entire global population of the critically endangered subspecies - the eastern black rhino - now reside in captivity in Europe; 94 animals out of an estimated 1,000 that remain in existence.
"The animals being released are the descendants of rhinos that - more than 40 years ago - were taken from East Africa and transported to Europe's zoos for display," explains Jan Stejskal, head of international programmes at Dvur Kralove. "This is the perfect opportunity to take them back to their homeland."
Under armed guard
Probably the biggest concern when planning this release was to find a place where the animals would be safe. The threat of poaching remains, with the demand for rhino horn apparently shifting from its perceived medical value (it actually has none) to a demand for jewellery and other valuable "trinkets" carved from it.
This persistent threat has meant finding a national park with an armed security force and high tech anti-poaching solutions. Akagera, which is managed by the conservation organisation African Parks in partnership with the Rwandan government, fits the bill.
The translocation represents a significant moment for Rwanda's natural history. Rhinos have previously been wiped out twice in the country by poaching - once during the 1940s and 50s, when their horns were in demand to make dagger handles, then again in 2010.
Eastern black rhinos were brought back to Akagera, from South Africa, in 2017. But that reintroduction was tinged with tragedy when a conservationist named Krisztian Gyongyi, who was monitoring the animals in the park, was killed by one of the rhinos.
This carefully planned release of the five specifically selected zoo rhinos, the team hopes, will be a new chapter in Rwanda ecotourism.
Clare Akamanzi, chief executive officer of the Rwanda Development Board, said that today, poaching was "almost non-existent in our four national parks".
"We are confident that these rhinos will thrive in their natural habitat in Akagera."
Dr Pilgrim added: "I genuinely believe there is nowhere safer in Africa right now than this national park."
Taking their very first steps on African soil, five critically endangered animals have no idea that scores of people - in Rwanda and across Europe - will be rooting for them.
Follow Victoria on Twitter
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President: Vladimir Putin | Vladimir Putin has been Russia's dominant political figure since his election as president in 2000, serving two terms and then a four-year stint as prime minister, before resuming the presidency in 2012.
Since his re-election against a token opponent, Russia's authorities have further tightened control over the media, marginalised genuine opposition, and adopted a stridently nationalist and anti-Western course to shore up domestic support, in contrast to a previous emphasis on stability and prosperity.
The last process accelerated with Mr Putin's tough response to the toppling of the pro-Russian government in Ukraine by pro-EU protests in early 2014.
Russia subsequently seized Crimea from Ukraine - a move that prompted Mr Putin's domestic approval rating to soar - and fomented a violent rebellion in the eastern provinces on Russia's border.
The following year, President Putin responded to the imperilled state of his ally President Bashar al-Assad in Syria, where Russia maintains its sole Mediterranean naval base, by sending warplanes to bomb the positions of rebel groups.
The president presents himself as a strong leader who took Russia out of the economic, social and political crisis of the 1990s and defends Russia's national interests, particularly against what he portrays as Western attempts to corner and foist cultural values on it.
Critics say that since taking power, Mr Putin has created an almost neo-feudal system of rule that concentrates control over key economic resources in the hands of a narrow circle of close associates, and is smothering economic dynamism, democratic development and a nascent civil society to protect itself.
Several of Mr Putin's rivals and opposition activists have sought safety abroad or ended up in prison, most prominently the former oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who spent 10 years in jail following his arrest on tax evasion and fraud charges in 2003.
KGB background
Born in St Petersburg in 1952, Vladimir Putin began his career in the KGB, the Soviet-era security police. From 1990 he worked in the St Petersburg administration before moving to Moscow in 1996. By August 1999 he was prime minister.
He was named acting president by his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, and went on to win presidential elections in May 2000, having gained popularity for launching a successful offensive against Chechen rebels, following a mysterious series of deadly explosions in Russian cities. He won again in 2004.
Barred by the constitution from running for a third consecutive presidential term in 2008, he made way for his prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, before the two swapped roles in 2012.
By this time, parliament had extended presidential terms from four to six years, so that Mr Putin - already one of Europe's longest-serving leaders - could potentially stay in power until 2024.
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Rick Grimes is back! | By Genevieve HassanEntertainment reporter
Fans of The Walking Dead have been eagerly waiting for news of what's to happen to Rick and the Alexandria community when season eight of the zombie drama returns to screens in October.
That patience was rewarded with a five-minute trailer which was presented by the cast and creators at Friday's Comic-Con panel.
Ahead of the clip, the team began with an emotional tribute to stuntman John Bernecker, who died last week after falling 30ft (9m) onto a concrete floor during a fight scene on the set.
"We didn't really know if we should do this panel today, but we wanted to be here for you and we wanted to tell you about John and show you what we've all been working on," executive producer Scott M Gimple said.
After criticism from fans that season seven was slow paced and had lost its way, the trailer for season eight was packed with action.
Here's a few of the things we learned. Warning, some of the below images include zombies.
Things aren't looking good for Father Gabriel
He appears to have been captured by Negan and has been locked in a room with zombies banging on the window outside. Negan says what will probably become one of the most quotable lines this season, but it has too many swear words to repeat here.
Everyone's gearing up for all-out-war with the Saviours
There's no dialogue for two minutes as we see a montage of people getting ready for the battle of their lives, accompanied by what sounds like those wooden blocks you used to play at school in music class if you couldn't play any other instruments.
Rick's inspirational speeches
He tells his crew: "When I first met him, Jesus said my world was going to get a whole lot bigger. Well, we found that world. We found each other. That bigger world is ours by right.
"Those who use and take and kill, we end them. Everything we've beaten, everything we've endured, everything we've risen above, everything we've become - no matter what comes next, we've won. We've already won!"
Daryl is still bad-ass
He's responsible for one of the three explosions in the trailer and he doesn't seem to mind that a zombie hoard is approaching, while casually taking a swig of water.
Jerry is still the funniest character
Even in the midst of war with blood on their faces, Jerry thanks King Ezekiel for "being such a cool dude". #BromanceGoals.
This zombie REALLY wants this carrier bag stuck up a tree
Huh?
Old man Rick
At the end of the trailer we see Rick lying in a bed with a walking cane against the wall, complete with grey hair and beard.
Fans of the comic will know there's a big time jump storyline which this could be a nod to - although we hope it's not just Rick waking up and realising it was all a dream. We'll find out in October.
You can watch the full trailer on Fox UK's YouTube channel. Warning: Contains bad language from the outset and graphic scenes of zombies.
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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Can you separate the fact from the fiction? | The new interactive BBC iReporter game - aimed at youngsters aged 11 to 18 - gives you the chance to take on the role of a journalist in the BBC newsroom.
It is a "choose your own adventure" game, created by Aardman Animations, which challenges you to make your own decisions on which sources, political claims, social media comments and pictures should be trusted as you contribute to the day's news output.
Which should be published, which should be checked and which should be discarded?
The game is part of a BBC initiative to help young people identify false stories by giving students and teachers resources to use in classrooms across the UK.
The resources also look at the issues of trust. In an era when people get their information from a much wider range of sources, how do young people gain confidence in deciding what they should trust?
Hints and tips on how to spot false information on social media and online are included, as well as lesson plans for teachers to use in school.
The BBC has also teamed up with the Centre for Argument Technology at the University of Dundee to create the "Evidence Toolkit" - a programme aimed at 16-to-18-year-olds.
It combines complex algorithms and archive material from BBC Radio 4's Moral Maze to help students identify the claims made and the reasoning in any news article and how the two are connected.
Professor Chris Reed, director of the centre, said: "Dissecting news articles to determine their anatomy and figure out how they're working is a delicate business.
"The Evidence Toolkit equips users with a set of razor-sharp tools to go about it."
John Lawrence, lead developer on the project, explained: "The Toolkit employs state-of-the-art artificial intelligence techniques for argument mining. This is the first time AI has been unleashed on understanding the reasoning in news articles."
BBC editor's top tips
Amol Rajan is the BBC's media editor and was previously editor of the Independent newspaper.
Let me tell you how I decide whether or not I can trust a news source. First of all, have they shown a commitment to accuracy over a long period of time? Have they consistently got things right?
And the second thing - which is related - is: do they admit when they get things wrong? You know, if you put your hand up and say 'Sorry, I made an error, there were factual mistakes in the piece that we published', then people like me are much more likely to believe you when you say another time that you got things right.
BBC game challenges young people to spot
Numbers are often used to tell all sorts of stories too. They can help show the scale of a particular problem or issue, illustrating whether it's big or small.
In this short animation you'll learn how just because a number looks big doesn't mean it really is and that a really small number might turn out to be much bigger than it first appears.
A BBC Live Lesson on sorting fact from fiction aimed at pupils aged 11 to 14 and complements both citizenship and English school curriculums is also available is also available to watch online here.
Presented by BBC Breakfast's Naga Munchetty, who will introduce experts from HuffPost UK and the independent fact-checking organisation Full Fact.
All the more online resources and lessons plans. are available for teachers and educators via www.bbc.co.uk/realnews
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Would you eat dog meat? | By Imran Rahman-JonesNewsbeat reporter
UK law says that you can't buy or sell dog meat, but if you humanely kill a dog you own, you can eat it.
But there have been calls to make it illegal, including from SNP MP Dr Lisa Cameron who believes the public would be "right behind legislation calling for a ban".
A spokesman for the prime minister says the UK has some of the highest animal welfare standards in the world and "we wish to maintain that".
Dr Cameron is the chair of the All-party Parliamentary Dog Advisory Welfare Group.
She told Newsbeat she wants a law banning eating dog meat to be passed quickly, adding: "I don't imagine that there will be any party in parliament which would stand against that."
A ban is also backed by Foreign Office minister and Conservative MP Sir Alan Duncan who told the Sun it is "absolutely right".
Dr Cameron says there has been a rise in the consumption of dog meat in the UK, but two animal welfare organisations that Newsbeat spoke to say that they don't have evidence for this.
The World Dog Alliance says it doesn't know if there are people in the UK who eat dog meat - but still wants it to be made illegal.
Humane Society International told Newsbeat it has "never come across any evidence to suggest that dog meat is being consumed in the UK".
Some countries in Asia eat dogs, and it is also said to happen in Switzerland, although it isn't widespread.
Animal organisations claim that some dogs which are eaten in other countries are stolen pets, are kept in horrible conditions and are tortured before they're killed.
Kike Yuen is project executive at the World Dog Alliance, based in Hong Kong, which campaigns to promote laws on banning dog meat consumption around the world.
The organisation has been lobbying for a similar law in the US. There have been few reported cases of people eating dog in the country.
Proposals for a law banning eating dog meat in America is currently working its way through US Congress.
"The reason why we did the legislation in the United States is because we found that there are some Asian immigrants eating dogs there," Kike told Newsbeat.
He adds: "We are worried that it is going to happen in the UK."
Humane Society International runs campaigns to end the dog meat trade in countries including Indonesia, China and South Korea.
Spokesperson Wendy Higgins says she "wouldn't want anyone to think that dog meat eating is rife in the UK or that it has anything to do with the number of people that we have living in this country from Asia".
She added: "Most people across Asia are united in wanting to see an end to the dog meat trade and I don't see numbers of people from Asia in the United Kingdom having any impact on that whatsoever."
Despite there being no evidence that people in the UK eat dogs, Dr Cameron said "the government has to take action to nip it in the bud".
She added: "I think it's a concern if it is happening at all, no matter where it is happening. I'm not aware that it's linked with any particular groups in terms of research outcome."
Theresa May's official spokesman said: "The commercial trade in dog meat in the UK is illegal, but we will look closely at the decision taken in the US.
"Britain is a nation of animal lovers and we continue to have some of the highest animal welfare standards in the world.
"We wish to maintain that."
Follow Newsbeat on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.
Listen to Newsbeat live at 12:45 and 17:45 every weekday on BBC Radio 1 and 1Xtra - if you miss us you can listen back here.
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Australian women in politics have had enough. | By Frances MaoBBC News, Sydney
A slew of allegations of sexist bullying and misogyny have emerged in recent years, while at the same time the country has steadily tumbled down the global rankings for female political representation.
Australia has tended to favour "larrikin" and "aggressor" MPs who thrive in the "rough-and-tumble" atmosphere of Canberra. But women MPs are increasingly saying that's a culture in dire need of change.
As the country prepares to go to the polls on Saturday, the BBC looks at what's come to be known as the "women problem" in Australian politics.
Sarah Hanson-Young was 25 when she won a seat in Australia's Senate in 2007, the youngest woman ever to do so.
The Greens member has always been a forthright voice on progressive issues and women's rights, but she has spoken extensively about how this was against a backdrop of mutterings from male opponents "about my dress, my body, and my supposed sex life".
She had largely ignored them, choosing the well-trodden path of rising above it all. But an exchange in parliament last year proved the final straw.
It happened during a debate on women's safety following a murder which shocked the nation. A young comedian walking home late at night had been killed by a stranger.
Ms Hanson-Young said women wouldn't need extra protection if men didn't rape them.
In response, an older male senator called out: "You should stop shagging men, Sarah."
Liberal Democrat Senator David Leyonhjelm - known for revelling in his controversial remarks - refused to apologise when confronted by Ms Hanson-Young, who is divorced with a child. He instead repeated his comments and other explicit claims in TV and radio interviews.
He accused her of hypocrisy. She accused him of "slut-shaming" - where slurs about a women's alleged sexual activities are used to demean or silence her.
Ms Hanson-Young said her 11-year-old daughter was asked at school whether her mum had "lots of boyfriends".
"I decided at that moment I'd had enough of men in that place using sexism and sexist slurs, sexual innuendo as part of their intimidation and bullying on the floor of the parliament," the senator said in a later interview.
She is suing Mr Leyonhjelm for defamation, on the grounds that he had attacked her character by suggesting she was a hypocrite and a misandrist (man-hater), and by repeatedly accusing her of making the claim that all men were rapists. Mr Leyonhjelm has consistently denied defaming her.
Ms Hanson-Young says she took the action because she is in a powerful enough position to do so whereas many women who encounter such comments at work are not.
"If we can't clean it up in our nation's parliament, well, where can we do it?"
'Suffered in silence for too long'
Australian politics is known to be rambunctious, with plain speaking considered a national trait.
But female lawmakers say the comments and treatment they receive can often be explicitly gendered in nature, can border on abuse or intimidation and do not happen to their male counterparts.
When one woman sensationally quit the ruling Liberal-led government last year, she sparked something of a groundswell revolt.
Australia, a hotspot of political coups, had just witnessed Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's ousting by party rivals. Julia Banks felt she had to act after experiencing the vicious infighting.
She pointed the finger at the "scourge of cultural and gender bias, bullying and intimidation" saying: "Women have suffered in silence for too long."
She was later backed up by other women in the government, including the party's deputy Julie Bishop who described "appalling" behaviour. One female senator threatened to name bullies, while the Minister for Women Kelly O'Dwyer confirmed allegations of bullying and intimidation.
The Liberal women have scotched suggestions that they're just not up to the "rough-and-tumble" of politics, as one of their male colleagues put it.
"The hallmark characteristics of the Australian woman… are resilience and a strong authentic independent spirit," blazed Ms Banks as she moved to the crossbench.
For her, it's proof that it's time for parliamentary culture to change. And that the only way to do that is "equal representation of men and women in this parliament".
Representation fight
When it comes to gender diversity, Australia's parliament is flagging.
Women - crucially, excluding indigenous Australians and most women of colour - first won the right to run in federal elections in 1902. But it took four decades - and 29 other countries do it first - before Australian women would actually win seats.
They have always won more in the Senate because, say experts, it uses proportional voting by state - whereas the lower house has distinct electorates.
The current parliament has reached an all-time high for percentage of women MPs.
But when it comes to its international standing, Australia has fallen behind. In the past 20 years it's slumped from 15th in the world to 50th for parliamentary gender diversity.
Overall, that's partly due to a lack of pressure on both parties, says Dr Jill Sheppard, a political scientist at the Australian National University.
A recent Australian Broadcasting Corporation survey found significant support among women - though not men - for measures to improve the deficit.
Labor has such a mechanism. It introduced an affirmative action quota in 1994 and is now close to 50% representation - about double the proportion of women in the government. At Saturday's election, women will contest 31% of its safe seats, according to election analyst Ben Raue.
The Liberal-National coalition may even see a dip in female representation, some analysts say. The coalition has put up women in only 16% of its safe seats, Mr Raue says.
"The Liberal Party is the drag here," says Dr Sheppard, when asked about the nation's fall in global diversity rankings.
She says the party tends to view its successful women "as almost unicorns - tremendous women who can't be replicated".
The party is seeking parity by 2025, but it is ideologically resistant to the idea of mandatory quotas and wants change to happen more organically.
"We don't want to see women rise only on the basis of others doing worse," said party leader and Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, in a speech on International Women's Day.
He drew considerable criticism for the remarks, which were seen as implying men shouldn't lose out to allow women to move up.
Targeted at the top
This is not a new issue for women in Canberra.
Natasha Stott Despoja joined parliament in 1995 at age 26, when women made up just 14% of the room.
In her 13 years as a senator, during which she became leader of the Australian Democrats, sexism was "endemic" in the political culture, she says.
"It ranged from male senators saying to me 'you really should wear skirts' to another senator referring to me only as 'mother' once I had children," she told the BBC.
After leaving parliament, she went on to be Australia's representative advancing women's rights around the world. She observed other nations' progress while watching the harassment continue at home.
"The single biggest disappointment for me has been the slow pace of change," she says.
Many thought Australia had turned a corner when Julia Gillard became the first female prime minister in 2010.
Ms Gillard achieved many reforms in a tough three years of minority government. But her seizure of the top job - ousting Kevin Rudd in a party coup - haunted her reputation and public legitimacy.
Opponents and some media regularly portrayed her as a Lady Macbeth figure - a characterisation that invokes latent fears about ambitious women. Debate over policies like a contentious carbon tax often degenerated into personal and gendered attacks.
She was "routinely demonised" for being unmarried and "childless" in office, say Associate Prof Cheryl Collier from the University of Windsor and Associate Prof Tracey Raney from Ryerson University, both in Canada.
Such terms "are rarely if ever used to describe male heads of state", they say in a 2018 report which compared the treatment of women MPs in Australia, UK and Canada.
Throughout her time in power the prime minister was called by her critics and opponents:
The fixation with her appearance at times was unashamedly lewd - a Liberal party fundraising dinner included a "Julia Gillard" menu item with explicit references to parts of her body. It also descended into violent imagery - one TV commentator said Australians "ought to be out there kicking her to death". Another high-profile radio host said she should be "put into a chaff bag and thrown into the sea".
The academics suggest the vitriol was so intense because Ms Gillard challenged the Australian stereotype of a good leader.
"Even women who have reached the top of the political ladder are working within an institution that privileges masculinity," say Prof Collier and Prof Raney.
In 2012, Ms Gillard confronted the sexist, misogynistic attacks in a searing speech in parliament. It reverberated around the world, and to this day girls in Young Labor can quote it like a chant.
But in her final speech as prime minister, after she had been removed by her party, she was stoic about the impact her gender had had on her time in office.
"It doesn't explain everything, it doesn't explain nothing, it explains some things. And it is for the nation to think in a sophisticated way about those shades of grey."
Leadership ideals
So is the problem just how things are done in parliament, or is it a wider issue about Australian culture?
It's telling that the most senior female politicians in the past decade - Ms Gillard from Labor and Julie Bishop, a former Liberal deputy - do not have children.
In a country the size of Australia, parliamentary life for MPs based far from Canberra is especially taxing on families, a challenge which tends to be particularly hard for women to overcome.
In the past year, several MPs - including Ms O'Dwyer but also a male MP - left parliament saying the job was incompatible with family life.
But Dr Sonia Palmieri, a gender politics researcher at the 50/50 by 2030 Foundation - which wants to "achieve gender parity in leadership" - says unacknowledged bias remains the fundamental problem.
"Our system always seems to assume that our political actors are gender neutral - when in fact they revolve around standards which are masculine and of course that excludes and shuts out women," she says.
Dr Palmieri argues this is partly because of specific notions of good political leadership in Australia.
She suggests there are roughly two types of accepted leader styles.
The first is the idea of the "larrikin" politician, a unique Australian term for a boisterous person - usually a man - whose bad behaviour is excused as disregard for convention.
Larrikins are seen as endearing in Australian culture, argues Dr Palmieri. There remains a cultural fascination with leaders such Prime Minister Bob Hawke - who could famously down a beer in seconds, and joked that the nation's workers deserved a day off after a landmark sporting victory.
The second accepted leader is the aggressor - the acerbic politician revered for their ability to cut down the other side in parliamentary debate.
Prime ministers such as Paul Keating and Tony Abbott were noted for their attacking rhetoric in parliamentary debates although their styles widely differed.
Larrikins and aggro fit within the wider stereotypes of Australian identity, says political researcher Blair Williams from the Australian National University.
"We have these models of football players, surf lifesavers, that sort of blokey masculinity that someone like Tony Abbott definitely displayed. But it leaves women out."
Aggression and even ambition are seen as unbecoming in women, says Dr Palmieri.
She too points to Ms Gillard, who was not only attacked for how she attained power - despite previous male leaders having seized control that way - but then wasn't given the opportunity to show a different model of leadership to the public.
Some have also pointed out double standards in the treatment of Emma Husar, a Labor MP forced to resign last year after a news story made a salacious sexual harassment claim.
The report broke mistreatment claims, but focused on the MP's sex life.
Ms Husar, a single mother, later said the "slut-shaming smears" ended her career. Her party asked her to step down less than two days after the report, she said.
A subsequent Labor investigation found no evidence of sexual harassment, but said "complaints that staff were subjected to unreasonable management… have merit".
More on Australia's election:
Dr Sheppard says both major parties are held back by traditional assumptions about women.
Party organisers fast-track men to office while "throwing obstacles in the path of women candidates", she says.
"They're not doing it deliberately, rather they're acting on decades of ingrained behaviour and what they're used to." Men are just seen as the safer option.
However, her research shows that women are very electable. Her survey of more than 2,000 Australians in 2018 found that when other markers were equal, women candidates were actually more popular than men.
She refers to Scandinavian countries when she suggests that women in politics will become normalised once levels reach 30-40%. This is already the case for Labor, she says, while the Liberal party "has another 20 years to go".
"We're not there yet, but what we are seeing in Australia is quite rapid generational shift.
"I hope in 15 to 20 years, it won't even be talked about as an issue."
'You need to be a bit brave'
Does this give hope to young women aspiring to enter politics?
In her school years Megan Stevens, 19 harboured ambitions of a career in parliament and is now studying politics at the University of Melbourne.
But increasingly she feels that she would be "more comfortable" working behind the scenes as a political staffer.
"How they treated Julia Gillard really put me off," she says.
The same goes for Liliana Tai, the University of Sydney student union president and a debating champion who interned at parliament over the summer.
She says pursuing a career in "real" politics is an almost overwhelming prospect.
Ms Tai fears that the cultural change needed to allow someone like her, a young, Chinese-Australian woman, to become an elected representative "may not be achieved in our lifetime".
"People think of leaders as what they're familiar with and what they know and historically that's been predominantly male, predominantly Anglo people," she says.
She believes that both parties still cater towards stereotypes in selecting candidates.
"I think they fixate so much on electability that they prioritise what they think people want and that leads to a pernicious cycle of not having change."
"But you need to be a bit brave, and go out on a limb and give that new person a chance."
Last year, the failed leadership bid by the government's most powerful woman, Julie Bishop, proved to Ms Tai that merit isn't enough.
Ms Bishop was deputy to four successive male party leaders over 11 years. An MP for two decades, she also served as Australia's first female foreign minister.
But she resigned from the front bench last year after losing a leadership battle to Scott Morrison. Her prospects were dashed by colleagues who tactically voted to keep another man out.
The Australian Financial Review called her: "The female Prime Minister who never was".
On the day of her resignation, she wore scarlet heels.
Whatever the politics of the events, a photograph of the lavish shoes, amid a sea of brogues and dark suits, became an iconic image of a lone woman cut out of power.
Australia's Museum of Democracy later exhibited the shoes, along with the photo, which they said were "a bold statement and a symbol of solidarity and empowerment among Australian women".
Ms Tai says she also took some hope from Ms Bishop's departure.
She mentions her final parliamentary speech, where the outgoing MP said public office was "one of the highest callings".
"I really resonated with that because that's what I believe too," says Ms Tai.
"Being in parliament is still the best way to represent people and bring about change."
Edited by Jay Savage and Anna Jones
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A chronology of key events:
| 1200-1600s - Rise and decline of the Monomotapa domain, thought to have been associated with Great Zimbabwe and to have been involved in gold mining and international trade.
1830s - Ndebele people fleeing Zulu violence and Boer migration in present-day South Africa move north and settle in what becomes known as Matabeleland.
1830-1890s - European hunters, traders and missionaries explore the region from the south. They include Cecil John Rhodes.
1889 - Rhodes' British South Africa Company obtains a British mandate to colonise what becomes Southern Rhodesia.
European settlers
1890 - Pioneer column of European settlers arrives from south at site of future capital Harare.
1893 - Ndebele uprising against British South Africa Company rule is crushed.
1922 - British South Africa Company administration ends, the white minority opts for self-government.
1930 - Land Apportionment Act restricts black access to land, forcing many into wage labour.
1930-1960s - Black opposition to colonial rule grows. Emergence in the 1960s of nationalist groups - the Zimbabwe African People's Union (Zapu) and the Zimbabwe African National Union (Zanu).
1953 - Britain creates the Central African Federation, made up of Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) and Nyasaland (Malawi).
1963 - Federation breaks up when Zambia and Malawi gain independence.
Smith declares independence
1964 - Ian Smith of the Rhodesian Front becomes prime minister, tries to persuade Britain to grant independence.
1965 - Ian Smith unilaterally declares independence under white minority rule, sparking international outrage and economic sanctions.
1972 - Guerrilla war against white rule intensifies, with rivals Zanu and Zapu operating out of Zambia and Mozambique.
1978 - Smith yields to pressure for negotiated settlement. Zanu and Zapu boycott transitional legislature elections. New state of Zimbabwe Rhodesia, led by Bishop Abel Muzorewa, fails to gain international recognition.
1979 - British-brokered all-party talks lead to a peace agreement and new constitution guaranteesing minority rights.
Independence
1980 - Zanu leader Robert Mugabe wins independence elections. Zimbabwe wins international recognition in April.
1982 - Prime Minister Mugabe sacks Zapu leader Joshua Nkomo from the cabinet, accusing him of plotting to overthrow the government.
North Korean-trained Fifth Brigade deployed to crush rebellion by Nkomo supporters in Midlands and Matabeleland provinces, and kill thousands of civilians over the next few years.
1987 - Mr Mugabe and Joshua Nkomo merge their parties to form Zanu-PF, dominated by Zanu.
1987 - Mr Mugabe changes constitution, becomes executive president.
1999 - Economic crisis worsened by Zimbabwe's unpopular military involvement in DR Congo civil war.
Opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) formed.
Farm seizures
2000 February - President Mugabe suffers defeat in referendum on draft constitution.
Squatters seize hundreds of white-owned farms in a violent campaign supported by the government.
2000 June - Zanu-PF narrowly fights off a challenge from the opposition MDC led by Morgan Tsvangirai at parliamentary elections, but loses its power to change the constitution.
2001 July - Finance Minister Simba Makoni acknowledges economic crisis, saying foreign reserves have run out and warning of serious food shortages. Most western donors, including the World Bank and the IMF, cut aid because of President Mugabe's land seizure programme.
2002 February - Parliament passes a law limiting media freedom. The European Union imposes sanctions on Zimbabwe and pulls out its election observers after the EU team leader is expelled.
2002 March - President Mugabe re-elected in elections condemned as seriously flawed by the opposition and foreign observers. Commonwealth suspends Zimbabwe for a year.
Food shortages
2002 April - State of disaster declared as worsening food shortages threaten famine.
2003 December - Zimbabwe pulls out of Commonwealth after the organisation decides to extend suspension of the country indefinitely.
2005 March - Zanu-PF wins two-thirds of the votes in parliamentary polls. Main opposition party says election was rigged against it.
2005 May-July - Tens of thousands of shanty dwellings and illegal street stalls are destroyed as part of a "clean-up" programme. The UN estimates that the drive has left about 700,000 people homeless.
2005 November - Ruling Zanu-PF party wins an overwhelming majority of seats in a newly-created upper house of parliament, the Senate.
2006 May - Year-on-year inflation exceeds 1,000%. New banknotes, with three noughts deleted from their values, are introduced in August.
2008 March - Presidential and parliamentary elections. Opposition MDC claims victory.
2008 June - Robert Mugabe declared winner of run-off presidential election after Morgan Tsvangirai pulled out days before the poll, complaining of intimidation.
Power-sharing deal
2008 July - EU, US widen sanctions against Zimbabwe's leaders.
2009 January - Government allows use of foreign currencies to try stem hyperinflation.
2009 February - Morgan Tsvangirai is sworn in as prime minister, after protracted talks over formation of government.
2009 September - IMF provides $400m support as part of G20 agreement to help member states.
2010 March - New "indigenisation" law forces foreign-owned businesses to sell majority stake to locals.
2010 August - Zimbabwe resumes official diamond sales, amid controversy over reported rights abuses at the Marange diamond fields.
2013 March - New constitution approved by an overwhelming majority in a referendum. Future presidents will be limited to two five-year terms.
Mugabe's last hurrah
2013 July - Presidential and parliamentary elections. Mr Mugabe gains a seventh term in office and his Zanu-PF party three-quarters of the seats in parliament. The opposition MDC dismisses the polls as a fraud.
2016 November - A new national currency - called bond notes - is introduced amid public resistance.
Emmerson Mnangagwa takes over
2017 November - Mr Mugabe resigns days after the military takes control, following a power struggle between supporters of his wife Grace and Zanu-PF veterans. Former vice-president Emmerson Mnangagwa becomes president.
2018 July - Mr Mnangagwa narrowly wins presidential election over Nelson Chamisa of the MDC Alliance. Announces plans to stabilise economy and encourage foreign investment.
2018 November - President Mnangagwa announces two-year project by the Australian mining firm Invictus Energy to investigate potential large oil and gas deposits in Muzarabani district, near the border with Mozambique.
2019 January - Protests break out in major cities after the government more than doubles fuel prices in an attempt to tackle shortages and the black market.
2019 March - Cyclone Idai causes extensive flooding and loss of life in eastern provinces.
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A chronology of key events:
| AD 803 - Emperor Charlemagne recovers area of present-day Andorra from Moors and is said to grant charter to its residents. After Charlemagne's death Andorra is granted to Spain's Count of Urgell by Charles II, grandson of Charlemagne.
1133 - Count of Urgell cedes Andorra to bishop of Urgell.
1278 - Under terms of "pareage" agreement, Andorra adopts joint allegiance to a French and a Spanish prince after disputes between French heirs to the Urgel countship and the Spanish bishops of Urgell.
1419 - Elected body, Council of the Land, is established to deal with local issues.
1607 - French royal edict establishes French head of state and bishop of Urgell as co-princes.
1866 - New Reform changes electoral system, heralds process of democratisation.
1933 - Judicial authority dissolves Council of the Land after unsuccessful attempt to install a Russian adventurer as "King Boris I". French gendarmes sent to restore order and elections are held for new council.
1936-39 - French troops sent to protect Andorra from spillover from the Spanish Civil War.
1939-45 - Andorra is neutral during the Second World War, becomes important smuggling route from Vichy France into neutral Spain.
1970 - Women given the vote.
1982 - First executive branch of government - "Govern" in Catalan - takes office. Its head is elected by Council of the Land.
First constitution
1990 - Andorra signs customs union with EU.
1993 March - First constitution adopted by referendum. Document reduces feudal powers of two princes. New executive, legislative and judicial arms of government are set up. Andorra joins United Nations. France, Spain establish embassies.
1993 December - First general elections under new constitution. Ribas Reig elected as premier in January.
1994 December - Marc Forne Molne of Unio Liberal party becomes prime minister after resignation of Ribas Reig.
2001 - Marc Forne Molne re-elected.
2002 October - Controversy flares as government closes incinerator which had been exceeding EU emission levels 1,000-fold.
2005 April - Liberal Party again wins elections. Albert Pintat becomes premier.
2005 July - Cooperation agreement with EU comes into effect.
2009 March - Andorra agrees to ease banking secrecy rules to make it easier for other countries to pursue tax evaders and money launderers.
2009 April - General elections. Social Democrats win most votes but fail to gain a majority.
2009 June - Parliament elects Social Democrat leader Jaume Bartumeu Cassany prime minister.
2011 April - Opposition centre-right Democrats for Andorra coalition wins snap parliamentary election, defeating Jaume Bartumeu Cassany's Social Democrats. Antoni Marti of the Democrats takes office as prime minister in May.
2013 June - Andorra introduces personal income tax for the first time as it faces pressure from the European Union to tackle tax evasion.
2016 February - US lifts sanctions imposed in 2015 on Andorra's fourth-largest bank, the Banca Privada d'Andorra, for money-laundering.
2016 December - Parliament approves plans to end the secrecy of bank accounts held by EU residents from January 2018.
2018 March - Andorra witnesses its first major strike in 85 years, with a third of civil servants protesting against proposals to change their contracts.
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A chronology of key events:
| 1538 - Spanish conquer Bolivia, which becomes part of the Vice-royalty of Peru.
1545 - Silver Mountain, or Cerro Rico, discovered at Potosi in the southwest, providing Spain with immense wealth.
1824 - Venezuelan freedom fighter Simon Bolivar, after whom Bolivia is named, liberates the country from Spanish rule.
1825 - Bolivia becomes independent with Simon Bolivar as its president.
1836-39 - Bolivia enters into a federation with Peru, but the federation fails following Peru's defeat in war with Chile.
1879-84 - Bolivia becomes landlocked after losing mineral-rich, coastal territory in the Atacama to Chile.
1903 - Bolivia loses the rubber-rich province of Acre to Brazil.
1920 - Rebellion by indigenous peoples.
1923 - Revolt by miners is violently suppressed.
1932-35 - Bolivia loses territory to Paraguay after it is defeated in the Chaco War.
Military coups
1952 - Peasants and miners overthrow military regime; Victor Paz Estenssoro returns from exile to become president and introduces social and economic reforms, including universal suffrage, nationalisation of tin mines and land redistribution, and improves education and the status of indigenous peoples.
1964 - Vice-President Rene Barrientos stages military coup.
1967 - US helps suppress peasant uprising led by Ernesto "Che" Guevara, who is killed after being betrayed by peasants.
1969 - Vice-President Siles Salinas replaces Barrientos who is killed in plane crash, but Salinas is himself deposed by the army, which rules with increased severity.
1971 - Col Hugo Banzer Suarez comes to power after staging military coup.
1974 - Banzer postpones elections and bans political and trade union activity in the wake of an attempted coup.
1980 - General Luis Garcia stages coup after inconclusive elections; US and European countries suspend aid in view of allegations of corruption and drug trafficking.
1981 - General Celso Torrelio Villa replaces Garcia, who is forced to resign.
1982 - Torrelio resigns as the economy worsens; military junta hands over power to civilian administration led by Siles Zuazo, who heads a leftist government.
1983 - US and European countries resume aid following the introduction of austerity measures.
Democracy and economic collapse
1985 - Siles resigns in the wake of a general strike and an attempted coup; elections held but are inconclusive; parliament chooses Paz Estenssoro as president.
1986 - Twenty-one thousand miners lose their jobs following the collapse of the tin market.
1989 - Leftist Jaime Paz Zamora becomes president and enters power-sharing pact with former dictator Hugo Banzer.
1990 - Some 4 million acres of rainforest allocated to indigenous peoples.
1993 - Banzer withdraws from the presidential race, which is won by Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada.
1997 - Banzer elected president.
1998 - Banzer tells the United Nations that he is committed to freeing Bolivia from drugs before the end of his term in 2002.
1999 - Encouraged by moves to prosecute former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, opposition demands inquiry into Banzer's role during the repression of the 1970s.
2000 - Banzer announces the almost total eradication of the coca plant in the Chapare jungle region.
2001 January - Government declares almost half of Bolivia a natural disaster area following heavy rains.
Banzer dies
2001 August - Vice-President Jorge Quiroga sworn in as president, replacing Hugo Banzer who is suffering from cancer. He dies in May 2002.
2001 December - Farmers reject a government offer of $900 each a year in exchange for the eradication of the coca crop used to produce cocaine.
2002 August - Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada wins a clear victory in a National Congress run-off vote and becomes president for a second time. His rival, coca growers' representative Evo Morales, leads a strengthened opposition.
2003 February - More than 30 killed in violent protests against proposed income tax. President Sanchez de Lozada withdraws the proposal.
2003 September-October - 80 killed, hundreds injured in protests fuelled by government plans to export natural gas via Chile. President Sanchez de Lozada resigns under pressure of protests and is succeeded by Carlos Mesa.
Energy protests
2004 April - President Mesa signs natural gas export deal with Argentina. Opponents say deal pre-empts referendum on gas exports planned for July. Protesters take to streets, demand president's resignation.
2004 July - Referendum on gas exports: Voters back greater state involvement in the industry and approve exports of the resource.
2004 August - Landmark deal signed to allow Bolivia to export gas via a Peruvian port.
2005 January - Rising fuel prices trigger large-scale anti-government protests and blockades in Santa Cruz, the country's largest and wealthiest city, and in El Alto, near La Paz.
Civic and business leaders in Santa Cruz push for autonomy for the province.
2005 March - President Mesa submits his resignation, blaming protests which he says have made it impossible to govern. Congress rejects the offer, as well as a later request by the president for early elections, and Mr Mesa remains in office.
2005 May - Protests over energy resources bring La Paz, and government business, to a near standstill. President Mesa promises a rewritten constitution and a referendum on autonomy demands from resource-rich provinces.
Socialists in power
2005 June - As angry street protests continue, President Mesa resigns. Supreme Court head Eduardo Rodriguez is sworn in as caretaker president.
2005 December - Socialist leader Evo Morales wins presidential elections. He becomes the first indigenous Bolivian to take office.
2006 May - President Morales issues a decree to put the energy industry under state control.
2006 June - President Morales claims victory in elections for a new assembly which will write a new constitution, aimed at giving more power to the indigenous majority.
2006 October - Clashes between rival groups of tin miners leave 16 people dead in the town of Huanuni.
2006 November - Land reform bill is narrowly approved by the Senate. The bill aims to expropriate up to one fifth of Bolivian land for redistribution to the landless poor.
Nationalisation
2006 December - Bolivia completes its gas nationalisation programme, launched in May, giving the state control over the operations of foreign energy firms in the country.
2007 January - Pro-Morales trade unionists and coca growers set up a parallel local government in Cochabamba and demand the resignation of the state's pro-autonomy governor. Clashes leave two people dead.
Government declares a state of emergency after months of heavy rain leave dozens of people dead and many thousands homeless.
2007 May - President Morales spearheads a protest campaign after world football's governing body, Fifa, bans international games at high altitudes. The ban rules out international matches in cities such as La Paz and Potosi.
2007 August - Presidents of Bolivia, Venezuela and Argentina sign joint energy deals worth more than $1bn.
Constitutional moves
2007 December - President Morales formally receives controversial new draft constitution which he says will promote re-distribution of the country's wealth and give a greater voice to the indigenous majority.
2008 August - President Morales gains 67% of vote in recall referendum on his leadership.
2008 September - Anti-government protests escalate into violence in the east and north of Bolivia, with 30 people killed in the worst-affected region, the northern province of Pando. The government and opposition agree to talks in an effort to resolve the crisis.
Bolivia expels the US ambassador, accusing him of fomenting civil unrest. Washington reciprocates by expelling the Bolivian ambassador.
2008 November - Bolivia stops US drug enforcement agency from operating in the country.
2009 January - New constitution giving greater rights to indigenous majority is approved in a national referendum, with more than 60% voting in favour.
2009 April - President Morales says a plot to assassinate him was foiled when police killed three international mercenaries in a raid on a house in the opposition stronghold Santa Cruz.
2009 May - Ex-President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada is tried in absentia over death of 60 during protests in 2003.
Morales re-elected
2009 December - President Morales is re-elected for a second term with more than 60% of the vote.
2010 May - President Morales orders nationalisation of four electricity firms, saying the state now controlled 80% of country's power generation.
Strikes and rallies against government wage policies.
President Morales meets Pope, urges him to allow priests to marry.
2010 October - Government scraps new law designed to cut cocaine production in response to anger from coca growers.
2010 December - Thousands of Bolivians take to the streets to protest government plans to increase the cost of fuel.
2011 January - Government drops plans to raise fuel prices by more than 70%.
2011 February - Sharp rises in the prices of basic foodstuffs and food shortages spark violent demonstrations.
2011 August-September - Plans to build a major road through a rainforest reserve - a project the government says is essential for development - spark mass protests.
2011 October - More than 60% voters cast invalid ballots in election to choose Bolivia's top judges, in what is interpreted as a major slap in the face for President Morales.
2012 January - Bolivia temporarily leaves UN Conventions on Narcotics in protest against classification of coca as an illegal drug, signs agreement with US and Brazil to help reduce the production of illegal cocaine.
2012 April - President Morales rescinds the contract awarded to Brazil's OAS to build a controversial road through the Amazon forest.
2012 May - President Morales nationalises Spanish-owned electric power company REE, saying it has not invested enough in Bolivia.
2012 June - Police strike for better pay sees violent clashes across country. Government accuses strikers of setting stage for coup, an allegation denied by police officers. Settled at end of month with reported 20% rise in wages.
2013 May - Bolivia passes a law paving the way for President Morales to be seek a third term. The constitution states that presidents can only serve two terms, but the supreme court ruled that, because the constitution was changed during Mr Morales' first four years, that term did not count. Opposition politicians denounce the law as unconstitutional.
President Morales expels the US Agency for International Development (USAID), accusing it of trying to "conspire against Bolivia".
2013 October - Luis Cutipa, the head of Bolivia's coca control and industrialisation agency, is arrested over accusations of illegally selling seized coca and other charges, which he denies.
2013 December - Bolivia launches its first telecommunications satellite.
2014 January - President Morales announces plans to build the country's first nuclear reactor.
2014 April - President Morales says the country's minimum wage will rise by 20%, and that the basic salary will go up by 10%.
Bolivia submits legal documents to the United Nations' highest court in support of its claim seeking to regain access to the sea from Chile.
Voters reject constitutional changes
2014 October - Evo Morales wins a third term as president.
2016 February - Voters in a referendum reject proposed constitutional changes which would have allowed President Morales to stand for another term.
2016 August - Deputy Interior Minister Rodolfo Illanes is killed after being kidnapped by striking miners campaigning against new mining laws.
2017 March - President Morales signs into law a controversial bill that nearly doubles the area that can be legally planted with coca plants.
2017 August - A five-person Truth Commission is sworn in, charged with investigating human rights violations during almost twenty years of military rule.
2019 November - President Morales resigns in wake of street protests after his bid to win a controversial presidential election.
2020 October - A former colleague of Mr Morales, Luis Arce, wins the presidential election after a year of rule by conservative politicians.
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A chronology of key events:
| 1842 - China cedes Hong Kong island to Britain after the First Opium War. Over the decades, thousands of Chinese migrants fleeing domestic upheavals settle in the colony.
1860 - The Convention of Peking cedes Kowloon formally to Britain.
1898 - China leases the New Territories together with 235 islands to Britain for 99 years from 1 July.
1937 - With the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War, Hong Kong becomes a refuge for thousands of mainland Chinese fleeing before the advancing Japanese.
1941 - Japan occupies Hong Kong. Food shortages impel many residents to flee to mainland China. The population drops from 1.6m in 1941 to 650,000 by the end of the Second World War.
1946 - Britain re-establishes civil government. Hundreds of thousands of former residents return, to be joined over next few years by refugees fleeing the civil war between the Nationalists and the Communists in China.
1950s - Hong Kong enjoys economic revival based on light industries such as textiles.
1960s - Social discontent and labour disputes become rife among poorly-paid workforce.
1967 - Severe riots break out, mainly instigated by followers of China's Cultural Revolution.
Late 1960s - Living conditions improve and social unrest subsides.
1970s - Hong Kong is established as an "Asian Tiger" - one of the region's economic powerhouses - with a thriving economy based on high-technology industries.
Countdown to handover
1982 - Britain and China begin talks on the future of Hong Kong.
1984 - Britain and China sign Joint Declaration on the conditions under which Hong Kong will revert to Chinese rule in 1997. Under the "one country, two systems" formula, Hong Kong will become part of one communist-led country but retain its capitalist economic system and partially democratic political system for 50 years after the handover.
1989 - The massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators in Beijing's Tiananmen Square leads to calls for the introduction of further democratic safeguards in Hong Kong.
1990 - Beijing formally ratifies Hong Kong's post-handover mini-constitution or Basic Law.
1992 April - Chris Patten becomes last British governor of Hong Kong, with a brief to oversee the colony's handover to China.
1992 October - Chris Patten announces proposals for the democratic reform of Hong Kong's institutions aimed at broadening the voting base in elections. China is outraged that it has not been consulted and threatens to tear up business contracts and overturn the reforms after it has taken control.
1992 December - Hong Kong stock market crashes.
1994 June - After nearly two years of bitter wrangling, Hong Kong's legislature introduces a stripped-down version of Chris Patten's democratic reform package. The new legislation widens the franchise but falls far short of providing for universal suffrage.
1995 - Elections held for new Legislative Council (LegCo).
One country, two systems
1997 July - Hong Kong is handed back to the Chinese authorities after more than 150 years of British control. Tung Chee-hwa, a Shanghai-born former shipping tycoon with no political experience, is hand-picked by Beijing to rule the territory following the takeover.
1998 May - First post-handover elections held.
2001 February - Deputy Chief Executive Anson Chan, a former deputy to Chris Patten and one of the main figures in the Hong Kong administration to oppose Chinese interference in the territory's affairs, resigns under pressure from Beijing and is replaced by Donald Tsang.
2002 June - Trial of 16 members of the Falun Gong spiritual movement arrested during a protest outside Beijing's liaison office in the territory. Falun Gong remains legal in Hong Kong, despite having been banned in mainland China in 1999, and the trial is seen as a test of the freedoms Beijing guaranteed to respect after the handover. The 16 are found guilty of causing a public obstruction.
2002 September - Tung Chee-hwa's administration releases proposals for controversial new anti-subversion law known as Article 23.
2003 March-April - Both China and Hong Kong are hit by the pneumonia-like Sars virus. Strict quarantine measures are enforced to stop the disease spreading. Hong Kong is declared free of Sars in June.
Calls for reform
2003 July - A day after a visit to the territory by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, 500,000 people march against Article 23. Two Hong Kong government members resign. The bill is shelved indefinitely.
2004 April - China rules that its approval must be sought for any changes to Hong Kong's election laws, giving Beijing the right to veto any moves towards more democracy, such as direct elections for the territory's chief executive.
2004 July - Some 200,000 people mark the seventh anniversary of Hong Kong's handover to Chinese rule by taking part in a demonstration protesting Beijing's ruling against electing the next chief executive by universal suffrage.
Britain accuses China of interfering in Hong Kong's constitutional reform process in a manner inconsistent with self-governance guarantees agreed before the handover.
2004 September - Pro-Beijing parties retain their majority in LegCo elections widely seen as a referendum on Hong Kong's aspirations for greater democracy. In the run-up to the poll, human rights groups accuse Beijing of creating a "climate of fear" aimed at skewing the result.
2004 December - Chinese President Hu Jintao delivers public rebuke to Tung Chee-hwa, telling him to improve his administration's performance.
Change of guard
2005 March - Amid mounting criticism of his rule, Tung Chee-hwa resigns, citing failing health. He is succeeded in June by Donald Tsang.
2005 May - Hong Kong's highest court overturns the convictions of eight of the Falun Gong members who were found guilty of causing an obstruction in the territory in 2002.
2005 June - Tens of thousands of people commemorate sixteenth anniversary of crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square. Hong Kong is the only part of China where the 1989 events are marked.
2005 September - Pro-democracy members of LegCo make unprecented visit to Chinese mainland. Eleven members of the 25-strong pro-democracy group had been banned from the mainland for 16 years.
2005 December - Pro-democracy legislators block Mr Tsang's plans for limited constitutional reforms, saying they do not go far enough. Mr Tsang said his plans - which would have changed electoral processes without introducing universal suffrage - went as far as Beijing would allow.
2006 March - Pope Benedict XVI elevates Bishop Joseph Zen, the leader of Hong Kong's 300,000 Catholics and an outspoken advocate of democracy, to the post of cardinal. China warns Cardinal Zen to stay out of politics.
2006 July - Tens of thousands of people rally in support of full democracy.
2007 January - New rules aim to restrict the number of pregnant women from mainland China who come to Hong Kong to give birth. Many had been drawn by the prospect of gaining Hong Kong residency rights for their children and evading China's one-child policy.
2007 April - Chief Executive Donald Tsang is appointed to a new five-year term after winning elections in March.
2007 July - Hong Kong marks 10th anniversary of handover to China. New government under Chief Executive Donald Tsang is sworn in. Plans for full democracy unveiled.
Timetable
2007 December - Beijing says it will allow the people of Hong Kong to directly elect their own leader in 2017 and their legislators by 2020. Mr Tsang hails this as "a timetable for obtaining universal suffrage", but pro-democracy campaigners express disappointment at the protracted timescale.
2008 September - Hong Kong's pro-democracy camp wins more than a third of seats in legislative elections, retaining a key veto over future bills.
2009 June - Tens of thousands of people attend a vigil in Hong Kong on the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. The territory is the only part of China to mark the anniversary.
2009 December - Hong Kong authorities unveil proposals for political reform in response to pressure for greater democracy, including an enlarged Legislative Council; critics say the moves do not go far enough.
2010 May - Five opposition MPs are returned to their seats, in by-elections they triggered by quitting - a move intended to pressure China to grant the territory full democracy.
Opposition Democratic Party, traditionally hostile to Beijing, holds its first talks with a Chinese official since the 1997 handover.
2012 July - Leung Chun-ying takes office as chief executive, succeeding Donald Tsang whose last months in office were dogged by controversy over his links with wealthy businessmen.
2012 September - Pro-democracy parties retain their power of veto over new laws in Legislative Council elections, but perform less well than expected. Turnout, at over 50%, was higher than in 2008.
2013 June - Hundreds march in support of whistleblower Edward Snowden, who fled to Hong Kong after exposing secret US surveillance programmes.
2014 June - More than 90% of the nearly 800,000 people taking part in an unofficial referendum vote in favour of giving the public a say in short-listing candidates for future elections of the territory's chief executive. Beijing condemns the vote as illegal.
Pro-democracy protests
2014 July - Tens of thousands of protesters take part in what organisers say could be Hong Kong's largest pro-democracy rally in a decade.
2014 August - Chinese government rules out a fully democratic election for Hong Kong leader in 2017, saying that only candidates approved by Beijing will be allowed to run.
2014 September-November - Pro-democracy demonstrators occupy the city centre for weeks in protest at the Chinese government's decision to limit voters' choices in the 2017 Hong Kong leadership election. More than 100,000 people took to the streets at the height of the Occupy Central protests.
2014 December - Authorities take down Mong Kok protest camp, leaving a few hundred protesters at two camps at Admiralty and Causeway Bay.
2014 December - Hong Kong tycoon and former government official Thomas Kwok is sentenced to five years in jail in the city's biggest-ever corruption case.
2015 June - Legislative Council rejects proposals for electing the territory's next leader in 2017. Despite pro-democracy protests and a lengthy consultation process, the plans remained the same as those outlined by China in 2014.
2016 August - Hundreds of protesters rally against the disqualification of six pro-independence candidates from Legislative Council elections on 4 September.
2016 September - A new generation of pro-independence activists win seats in Legislative Council elections in the highest turnout since the 1997 handover from Britain to China.
2016 November - Thousands of people gather in central Hong Kong to show their support for China's intervention in the territory's political affairs after Beijing moves to have two pro-independence legislators removed from office.
2016 November -The high court disqualifies pro-independence legislators Sixtus Leung and Yau Wai-Ching from taking their seats in the Legislative Council after they refused to pledge allegiance to China during a swearing in ceremony.
2016 December - Chief Executive CY Leung announces he will not see re-election when his current term ends in July 2017, citing family reasons.
2017 February - Former chief executive Donald Tsang is sentenced to 20 months in prison for misconduct in public office after he was accused of concealing private rental negotiations with a property tycoon for a luxury apartment in China, in return for awarding its owner a broadcasting licence.
2017 March - CY Leung's deputy Carrie Lam wins the Electoral College to become the next chief executive.
2017 June - Chinese President Xi Jinping visits Hong Kong to swear in Chief Executive Carrie Lam, and uses his visit to warn against any attempt to undermine China's influence over the special administrative region.
2017 January - Demonstrations against moves to base officials from mainland China in the territory.
2019 June-July - Hong Kong sees anti-government and pro-democracy protests, involving violent clashes with police, against a proposal to allow extradition to mainland China.
|
No Facebook, Twitter or WhatsApp. | By Christopher Giles and Peter MwaiBBC Reality Check
That's becoming more and more common in some African countries, where governments have periodically shut down the internet or blocked social media platforms.
Digital rights activists say it's censorship, but governments argue it helps maintain security.
So where and how in Africa is internet access being restricted?
Which African countries are blocking access?
A government can restrict access by ordering internet service providers (ISPs) to limit access to their subscribers.
In the first instance, this is likely to be a block on commonly used social media sites.
As a more extreme measure, the authorities can order service providers to block all internet access.
Cases of internet shutdowns in Africa have been rising.
Tanzania restricted access to the internet and social media applications during the recent elections.
In June this year, Ethiopia imposed an internet shutdown which lasted for close to a month in response to unrest which followed the killing of a prominent Oromo singer and activist Hachalu Hundessa.
Zimbabwe, Togo, Burundi, Chad, Mali and Guinea have also restricted access to the internet or social media applications at some point this year.
In 2019, there were 25 documented instances of partial or total internet shutdowns, compared with 20 in 2018 and 12 in 2017, according to Access Now, an independent monitoring group.
And the group says that in 2019, seven of the 14 countries that blocked access had not done so in the two previous years.
The new countries were Benin, Gabon, Eritrea, Liberia, Malawi, Mauritania and Zimbabwe.
This is part of a global trend, where more and more countries are restricting internet access, up to 213 shutdowns globally compared with 106 in 2017.
The group says in Africa, most lockdowns tend to affect entire countries as opposed to specific regions or groups of people.
Last year, 21 out of the 25 shutdowns recorded by the group affected entire countries or most parts of the countries.
Only Sudan and Ethiopia had targeted shutdowns.
"This indicates that shutdowns are not only growing in number, but are also expanding in scope and affecting more and more people in Africa," the group says.
How is internet access blocked?
In each country, it's down to the individual service providers to carry out instructions from the authorities to block access.
One method used is known as URL-based blocking.
This is a filter which prevents access to a list of banned sites.
A user trying to access these sites might see various messages such as "server not found" or "this site has been blocked by the network administrator".
Another method is called throttling.
This approach severely limits traffic to specific sites, giving the impression that the service is slow, thereby discouraging access.
This is more subtle, as it's difficult to know whether sites are being actively restricted or whether poor broadband infrastructure is to blame.
As a final measure, telecoms companies can be required to shut down their services entirely, preventing all data access.
Can service providers say no?
The ability of governments to censor the internet depends on their ability to exercise control over telecommunications companies.
Internet service providers are licensed by governments, which means they risk fines or the loss of their contracts.
Operators may have the right to appeal to the courts, but in practice they rarely do.
However, there have been exceptions.
Last year, the courts in Zimbabwe ruled in favour of reinstating internet access after the government ordered restrictions.
In response, the government implemented new regulations allowing them greater control over the internet.
Zimbabwe's information minister Monica Mutsvangwa says this will "ensure that internet and related technologies are used for the good of society, not to violate national security."
There are also examples where governments wishing to shut down the net have an easier task.
"There are exceptions like Ethiopia where telecommunications is still not liberalised", says Dawit Bekele, Africa Regional Bureau Director for the Internet Society.
"There is a de-facto single gateway owned by the government operator that can easily be used to block the Internet," he says.
Unless access to the internet has been shut down completely, there are ways that individuals can manage to evade these barriers.
The most common method is the use of virtual private networks (VPNs). These encrypt data paths, making it difficult for service providers to block access to restricted sites.
Governments can also block VPNs, but are less inclined to do so because this also severely inconveniences foreign diplomats and large companies which use them.
Some African governments have pointed to the rise of "fake news" online as a reason for enforcing restrictions.
But some analysts and opposition figures consider this an excuse for suppressing groups critical of the government, which often organise on Facebook and WhatsApp.
"Before, during and after elections, governments tend to block the internet because of dissent," says Mr Bekele.
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I call it "Green Day". | By Adam FlemingBBC News, Brussels
At a press conference in March the Brexit Secretary David Davis and the EU's chief negotiator Michel Barnier unveiled a slideshow of the Brexit Treaty, with the sections agreed by both sides highlighted green.
It amounted to roughly 75-80% of the 129-page document that will seal the terms of the UK's departure from the EU and which is officially called the "Agreement on the Withdrawal of the United Kingdom".
The UK says the deadline for settling the outstanding issues is October, when the agreement will be submitted to the European Parliament. Mr Barnier wants progress on these issues in time for an EU summit on 28 June.
Here is what's left to discuss:
Northern Ireland
Both sides have committed to avoid infrastructure on the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland.
Brussels has proposed a protocol - nicknamed "the backstop" - which would see Northern Ireland stick to those rules of the customs union and single market that are required for cross-border co-operation to continue.
It's described as an insurance policy in case no other solutions are found.
Britain agrees to the need for a backstop but says this version risks barriers being created between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK, and so wants an alternative.
Solving disputes
Known in the trade as "governance" this is an item that sounds boring but which Michel Barnier says could bring the whole deal down: how to solve disputes between the UK and the EU arising as a result of the treaty?
The EU has proposed a Joint Committee made up of representatives appointed by London and Brussels. If they can't solve a problem, it would be referred to the European Court of Justice.
The UK government likes the idea of "J-Com" but not of judges in Luxembourg having the final say.
A complicated compromise to oversee the governance of the citizens' rights part of the deal hasD been agreed, though.
Then there is a swathe of subjects known as Other Separation Issues (OSI's).
Champagne and pasties
The EU is proud of its rules that protect regional products so that champagne can only come from Champagne, Manchego cheese can only come from La Mancha, Cornish pasties from Cornwall.
Brussels wants this system written into British domestic law. The Brits agree with the concept but aren't sure about the method and want to ensure it applies to British products in the EU too.
Some in the food and drink industry suspect some ministers view this as a measure to protect European industries that would limit the UK's room for manoeuvre in future trade talks with other countries.
Crime and courts
There are still disagreements about how both sides will work together on on-going police and judicial matters.
For example, the EU says that the European Court of Justice should be able to pass judgements that have an effect in the UK after the end of the transition period in cases where events occurred before the end of the transition period.
On security, the UK thinks that co-operation on extradition, the British relationship with the EU crime-fighting agency Europol and the sharing of criminal records should be the subject of a separate security treaty which the two sides should begin negotiating straight away.
Direct effect?
The EU wants the European laws that are mentioned in the Brexit Treaty to continue to apply in the UK in the way they do now.
This is the legal concept of "direct effect" which is at the heart of the argument over the supremacy of EU law.
The UK government has agreed to write the Withdrawal Agreement into domestic legislation but is still working on the details of how to do this, before it's voted on by MPs.
Nuclear material
Remember the huge political row in Summer 2016 over the UK's departure from the EU's nuclear energy watchdog Euratom?
Most issues related to it have been settled, apart from who will own certain radioactive material that remains in the UK - Britain or the EU countries where it originated?
The signals are that a deal is close on this highly technical matter.
Data
British companies hold all sorts of personal data belonging to EU citizens, and the European Commission thinks that European data protection law should continue to apply to it after Brexit.
The UK would like a comprehensive deal on data sharing with the EU as part of the discussions about the future relationship, and is wary of agreeing divorce-related measures that could tie its hands.
Government contracts
There's a section about how to handle government tenders for goods and services which will be underway during the Brexit process - so called "public procurement". Think new British passports being made by a Franco-Dutch firm.
Most of it has been agreed, but one jargon-filled paragraph stands out as unresolved.
It concerns the rule which says new contracts should be open to companies across the EU. Public procurement lawyers suspect the UK is waiting for a guarantee that British firms will be able to bid for European government business if British contracts remain open to their continental competitors.
Sharing information about tax
The EU wants the UK to share customs data for three years after the end of the transition period, and information about certain taxes for five years after the end of the transition period.
And there are some other unresolved technical issues scattered throughout the document that test the knowledge of even the most seasoned Brexit geek.
But small details could have a big effect because the whole lot has to be agreed for the deal to be signed off.
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Blimey. | Laura KuenssbergPolitical editor@bbclaurakon Twitter
If you are looking for drama, the Conservative Party rarely disappoints.
If you are looking for stability these days, that's a different matter.
To absolutely no one's surprise, Boris Johnson's march to Number 10 has taken a giant stride.
Love him or loathe him, he is the biggest political star in this contest, and he persuaded his colleagues by a handsome margin that he's meant for the highest office in the land.
The number of votes he received increased again, up to 160 this time, more than half of the parliamentary party.
The gasps in central lobby when the result emerged though were not because of his stellar lead, but down to the wafer-thin margin in the race to be his challenger.
Environment Secretary Michael Gove, Mr Johnson's companion on the referendum campaign trail before he sabotaged his leadership bid, received 75 votes.
That's quite something when you consider just 10 days ago he was under the cosh over revelations of taking cocaine when he was working as a journalist.
But Jeremy Hunt, the former Remainer and current Foreign Secretary, won 77 votes - so close you can almost hear the squeak.
Now, there's no doubt that Mr Johnson is, at this stage (and there's a long way to go), widely expected to end up in Number 10.
But this result is an enormous relief to his camp, for the simple reason that they think Mr Hunt is easier to beat.
Forget any differences in style between the two challengers and their comparative talents - Jeremy Hunt voted Remain in the EU referendum.
And for many Tory members it is a priority for the next leader to have been committed to that cause, rather than a recent convert, however zealous.
Of course, pay attention to recent political history. Upsets are the norm. Outsiders become insiders. Strange things happen, and that's before you price in Mr Johnson's ability to cause havoc for himself.
But this result has left Mr Johnson's camp hugely relieved.
One of his most committed backers was laughing with joy and savouring not a little bit of revenge when I talked to them.
Memories and suspicion linger long around here. And the narrow margin between Mr Gove and Mr Hunt has created doubts of its own.
Rumours are swirling that Mr Johnson's camp were engaged in skulduggery all day, that they would have pushed some of their own supporters to back Mr Hunt, to try to stop Mr Gove from coming second.
The message from on high in Mr Johnson's campaign is that the candidate himself was clear that absolutely must not happen, that he'd frown on any attempt to engineer the result.
Eyebrows have been raised, though. At least four of Sajid Javid's supporters declared online they would switch their support to Mr Johnson. But his actual tally only went up by three in the final ballot.
Were their arms twisted to "lend" their actual votes to Mr Hunt to keep Mr Gove off the ballot?
One member of the cabinet said there had been "more churn than a washing machine". It was a secret ballot, so we will never know exactly what happened. But corralling votes is the fundamental art of getting politics done.
But now this episode is over, we know which pair of politicians will vie to run the country.
The favourite, a public school and Oxford-educated former cabinet minister, who has survived more serious scrapes than Theresa May's had hot dinners.
The other, a millionaire public school-educated Oxford graduate, who's been in the cabinet for nearly a decade who tonight, has branded himself "the underdog".
And remember it's Tory members, not the rest of us, who'll make the final call.
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Saasha Celestial-One stands out. | By Katie PrescottBusiness presenter, Today programme
Not just for her unusual name, but because, along with her business partner Tessa Clarke, they have won a slice of the meagre 1% of UK venture capital funding that goes to female-run companies for their business, Olio.
Olio aims to tackle the problem of food waste by connecting people who have food they don't want or need, with neighbours who do.
Ms Clarke and Ms Celestial-One believe that because their business is primarily targeted at women, it hasn't resonated as much with male investors.
After three successful rounds of funding, they say that they've done noticeably better when pitching to women. The trouble is, the venture capital industry is still overwhelmingly dominated by men.
"Our conversion rate with women is north of 70%, compared to 5% or 10% for male investors," says Ms Celestial-One.
"There aren't nearly enough women with cheque-writing abilities, so in our experience, we believe a lack of diversity at VC (venture capital) firm level is a real challenge for female founders."
The latest report from Diversity VC, which monitors the make-up of the industry, shows that 63% of UK venture capital firms have no women at all in senior investment positions.
Why investors matter
The UK venture capital industry is small, but packs a big punch. The 171 firms based here only employ an average of nine people each.
But the money they invest really talks. In 2018, venture investors in the UK committed £6.3bn to early-stage companies. The UK is the largest venture market in Europe and the fourth-largest in the world.
As in the television programme Dragons Den, venture capital firms listen to hundreds of pitches from start-ups and try to pick the winners, giving them money and advice. This can turbo-charge small businesses, enabling them to grow quickly and make a leap on to the global stage.
Francesca Warner, the co-founder of Diversity VC, says these decisions can have an impact on society.
"VCs invest in early-stage technology companies, which have the potential to become influential powerbrokers in the future," she says.
"As venture investors enter the fray so early on, they can make a huge impact on the make-up and culture of the organisations that they fund."
Talking at cross-purposes
The number of women in the industry is important because it influences where the money goes.
As entrepreneurs such as Ms Clarke and Ms Celestial-One have found, investors are more likely to make investments in businesses that reflect their interests.
"Two-thirds of our user base is female and at the end of the day investors are humans and it's much easier to get your head around a product if it's something you can directly relate to," they say.
The recent Alison Rose review of women and finance found that many women entrepreneurs encounter a lack of understanding and imagination from investors evaluating their business ideas.
This judgement can extend into the personal lives of the founders. Inside the confidential walls of a pitch situation, the gloves are off.
Groups of female founders swap stories about male investors concerned about making an investment in someone who is pregnant - or if there is a suspicion they could take time off to have a child.
Ms Clarke says that as a result, when they pitch, "we make it very clear we're not having any more children."
This all adds an extra layer of fear to the already fraught process of fund-raising - with the added knowledge that as women, their chances of winning funding from investors is slim.
"On an emotional level, it's challenging. You find that you're second-guessing yourself and anything you say by thinking, 'What would a man say or do?'"
Old boys' network
Reports such as Diversity VC's are raising awareness in the industry, but Warner says it's still primarily built on networks.
Because the funds themselves are often small, they tend to employ people through introductions and word of mouth.
And unlike other industries, there's no overarching regulatory body and in many cases, a lack of transparency and accountability.
Ms Warner, who worked for a VC fund following a career in advertising, explains: "Most of the things they do are about backing people they know and come across, that they can trust and rely on. They don't follow formalised processes."
Their size and structure also means there is little staff turnover. Partners in funds have to put their own money in, which means they are committed to it for the long term.
Case for change
Veteran investor Saul Klein, who was part of the team behind Skype, says the business case for a diverse team is overwhelming.
"Half of our team is made up of women. We think that diverse experiences and skill sets promote better decision-making and we've seen in the last few years that our ability to attract and be a good partner to female founders has improved," he says.
"It is not that there are less female founders, but the people who are gatekeepers to the capital are predominantly men."
This view is shaping the industry and that brings more women entrepreneurs to the table.
Zoe Castro, an investor from Octopus Ventures who backed Olio, says that for them, backing women has had a snowball effect in breaking down the barriers to entry.
"In the last 24 months one in three of our investments has been a female led company, so we now have a pool of ambassadors and people who look to us and see us as a source of support," she explains.
The pipeline to top venture capital jobs is improving and the number of junior women in the industry has gone up by 8% since 2017.
More initiatives are being put in place to help women into cheque-writing positions.
For the founders of Olio, this means there's never been a better time to start a company
As they say, "Now is an amazing time to be a female founder, because the investment community is recognising the importance of diversity and wanting to double or triple down on it."
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Spending Review headlines | Chancellor George Osborne has set out the state of the economy in the Autumn Statement and spending plans for the next four years in the Spending Review. Here are the main points:
Police, security and justice
Welfare and tax credits
Health
Education
Housing and local government
Business, science, energy and the environment
Pensions, savings and personal taxation
Infrastructure, transport and culture
State of the economy and borrowing
2015 Spending Review and Autumn Statement
Presented by Chancellor George Osborne, the Spending Review sets out what government spending will be over the next four years, while the Autumn Statement is an annual update of government plans for the economy.
Explained: Which government departments will be affected?
Analysis: From BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg
Special report: Full in-depth coverage of the Spending Review and Autumn Statement
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How long would you wait for petrol? | Would you queue for an hour just to fill up your tank? How about queuing at many different petrol stations only to find some are out of fuel entirely?
This is the reality that has faced many Brazilians as petrol stations are only now beginning to recover from a fuel shortage that brought much of Brazil to a standstill.
Lorry drivers are striking in the South American country over the rising cost of fuel, with diesel prices nearly doubling since 2016.
The protests led to mass queues at petrol stations, with one person telling the BBC that they travelled to three petrol stations before finding one that had any fuel.
'People are buying up all the petrol'
Paolita Gonzalez was able to see the situation in gas stations across Brazil as she travelled on a bus from Lima to São Paulo.
"People are protesting in the streets," she said. "They're buying up all the petrol.
"We went to three petrol stations today before finding one that wasn't completely out of fuel. And 10 minutes after our arrival a swarm of people showed up to create a line of 20 cars and 40 bikes.
"When they find a petrol station that still has fuel, swarms of people show up with their vehicles buying as much as they can.
"We have seen this at many petrol stations on our journey."
'Only 15% of stations have petrol'
Lazar Wall is in the Ipanema neighbourhood of Rio de Janeiro.
He described the situation as "slowly going back to normal" as petrol stations are being replenished, and explained that local media in Rio is reporting only 15% of petrol stations now have fuel.
"Cheaper petrol is selling out immediately," he said. "Personally I can't stray too much from local tube stations because my car is running on empty.
"Vehicle traffic on the streets has been scarce, making these days look like a World Cup match when everybody's at home watching TV.
"Grocery store shelves are getting empty, especially of vegetables and fruits."
Strike garners support online
One commentator tweeted the relative improvement in people's lives since the fuel crisis began.
The lorry drivers' strike has yet to conclude.
Brazilians have shown their support online by tweeting #EuApoioAGreveDosCaminhoneiros - which can be translated as "I support the truckers' strike" - with over 500,000 tweets sent using the hashtag.
Such tweets include a powerful video of striking drivers singing the Brazilian national anthem whilst on their knees, as well as lighter footage of people playing music to support the strike on the roadside.
And one person shared pictures of drivers who transport perishable food donating their cargo to charity rather than letting it spoil in the heat.
By Victoria Park & Tom Gerken, BBC UGC & Social News
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"I was too aggressive." | By Zoe ThomasBBC Business reporter, New York
That was the message of Valeant's outgoing chief executive Michael Pearson on Wednesday as he testified to a Senate committee about the company's pricing strategy.
The Senate Ageing Committee is investigating the industry-wide practice of buying existing prescription drug brands and ratcheting up prices.
It has caused outrage and provoked criticism from presidential candidates.
The former boss of drugs firm Turing - Martin Shkreli - became the poster-child for the problem when Turing raised the price of one drug by 5,000%.
But, Valeant has increased the price of many more of its medicines.
Mr Shkreli sniggered through his own appearance before the committee earlier this year and refused to answer questions.
'Regret'
Mr Pearson was more conciliatory in his remarks, acknowledging that Valeant's strategy of buying older medicines and raising their price rather developing new drugs had gone too far.
"In hindsight I regret pursuing, transactions where a central premise was a planned increase in the prices of the medicines," he said.
But Mr Pearson can soon begin to put that regret behind him. On Monday, Valeant's board announced it had concluded its month-long search for his replacement. Joseph Papa, the ex-head of pharmacy company Perrigo will take over as chief executive in May.
Mr Papa won't be the only new member of Valeant's leadership. Activist investor Bill Ackman, an outspoken supporter of Valeant and its pricing methods, joined the company's board in March.
Until recently he was also a loyal partner to Mr Pearson.
After all that has happened - the threat of a default, several failed attempts to buy Botox-maker Allergan, a scandal involving "phantom" pharmacies, federal investigations, and an 80% drop in the company's share price in one year -that relationship has crumbled.
And nearly all those problems link back to the way Valeant and its long-time boss pursued profits through aggressive price hikes.
Rises defended
In 2010 Mr Pearson was named chief executive of Valeant after a merger with Canada's Biovail.
Under his stewardship Valeant positioned itself as a new type of drugs company, focused on growth through acquisitions and exploiting the eccentricities of the US pharmaceuticals industry to boost profits.
It raised the price of a lifesaving heart drug, Nitropress, by 525% in 2015 and a migraine treatment, DHE 45, by 356% over the course of a year.
The industry has defended this practice saying that, without raising prices, it would be unable to invest in new treatments.
It is Valeant's wholehearted embrace of price increases rather than research and development that has raised questions about whether its leaders really had a long-term plan keep the company profitable.
"Valeant's actions were an order of magnitude more extreme than its peers," says David Amsellem, senior research analyst at Piper Jaffray.
"There are a lot of older drugs with some degree of price inelasticity that doesn't mean you should take triple-digit price increases on these products," he says.
Allergan and Ackman
Supporting this approach for the last two years was hedge fund manager Bill Ackman.
In 2014, Mr Ackman and Mr Pearson announced a partnership to pursue Valeant's purchase of Irish Botox maker, Allergan.
Mr Ackman, who owned stock in Allergan, praised Mr Pearson's ability to keep costs down and expand profit.
The slick-talking, extrovert investor made a significant contrast to the soft-spoken, cost cutting chief executive. But their partnership remained strong, even after Allergan rejected Valeant's offer, and Mr Ackman was accused of insider trading for making a deal with Valeant while owning Allergan shares.
The friendship seemed all the more astounding given Mr Ackman's propensity for fighting with the management and boards of companies he invests in.
'Phantom' pharmacies
The first severe blow to Mr Pearson's leadership came in October 2015 when Valeant's ties to mail-order pharmacy Philidor were uncovered.
Valeant was accused of using Philidor to boost the price of medicine by falsifying sales.
Mr Pearson admitted that Valeant had an option to buy Philidor and that it included the pharmacy's financial records in its own.
The relationship raised suspicion from regulators and investors about the truthfulness of Valeant's accounting practices. This concern remained even after Valeant cut ties with Philidor.
Leave of absence
In December Mr Pearson was hospitalised with severe pneumonia and forced to take medical leave.
In his absence chief financial officer Howard Schiller stepped in.
Mr Schiller defended Valeant's price increasing practice before Congress, in February saying: "Higher prices draw generic competitors into the market, which in turn tends to put significant downward pressure on prices."
But that defence of Valeant's signature strategy was undermined when Valeant admitted it was the subject of "several ongoing investigations" by regulators and cut its corporate earnings projections.
The news sent Valeant shares tumbling 51% in a single day, just two weeks after Mr Pearson returned to work.
At the end of March, Valeant asked for an extension to file its annual financial report while it worked to improve its internal accounting system.
Without the extension - secured a few weeks later - Valeant would have risked defaulting on $30bn of debt.
By that time Valeant's board had announced it was searching for Mr Pearson's replacement and one-time partner Bill Ackman was on Valeant's board.
Senator Susan Collins and Senator Claire McCaskill, leaders of the Senate Aging Committee, called Mr Pearson's testimony "central" to understanding the impact of sky-rocketing drug prices.
How Valeant pursues profits in the wake of these scandals is not yet clear. But that will no longer be Mr Pearson's problem.
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The threat was implicit. | Katya AdlerEurope editor@BBCkatyaadleron Twitter
On the eve of their two-day summit in Brussels, the prime minister reminded EU leaders of his words back in early September.
A trade deal had to have been agreed between the two sides by 15 October for it to be in force by the end of the year, he'd said.
If not, he added: "I do not see that there will be a free trade agreement between us, and we should both accept that and move on."
In other words - end negotiations and walk away.
Yet, Boris Johnson moved the goalpost himself on Wednesday evening.
In a call with the European Commission president and the European Council president he said he would wait for EU leaders to finish their summit discussions on Friday before deciding the UK's next steps.
EU diplomats I spoke to were unimpressed.
"Boris Johnson swore before he'd die in a ditch. He's set deadlines again and again and they have come and gone," a seasoned EU figure told me.
But Brussels is far from sanguine about the prospect of failing to agree a UK deal.
Leaders like the Netherlands Prime Minister Mark Rutte have said the Covid-19 pandemic makes it all the more important to have an agreement. The economic fallout of no-deal come the end of the year would provoke additional political and economic headaches EU politicians would far prefer to avoid. They assume Boris Johnson feels the same way.
Yet EU leaders are not yet all on the same page when it comes to how much they should give up or give in to get a deal.
Brussels keeps calling on the UK to make concessions but a successful outcome will require compromises on both sides.
And that is the real significance of this week's summit.
It's not all about Brexit.
EU leaders plan to discuss Covid-19, the environment and EU-Africa relations as well. But this is very likely the last time they'll be face to face before negotiations with the UK end. It's also the first time in a long time that EU leaders hold a detailed discussion on Brexit. For much of this year the Covid-19 pandemic has sucked the political oxygen across Europe.
So, how much is a deal worth to them?
Will France's Emmanuel Macron relinquish his hard-line position about keeping current fishing quotas in UK waters? He'll have to, to get a UK deal.
Will Germany's Angela Merkel give way on some demands on competition regulations (aka the level playing field) yet still grant the UK zero tariff, zero quota access to the single market?
EU leaders must agree all this amongst themselves and it won't be straightforward. A trade agreement with the UK impacts the bloc's global reputation, EU businesses (especially those in countries with high trade volumes with the UK, like Germany and the Netherlands) and political fortunes.
Angela Merkel is thinking of her legacy as she prepares to step down as chancellor next year. She wants to maintain close ties with the UK for geopolitical as well as economic reasons. She also keen to avoid any major internal EU disagreements over the deal.
Emmanuel Macron meanwhile, is looking over his shoulder at his arch political rival, the Eurosceptic nationalist Marine Le Pen. He hopes to demonstrate in negotiations with the UK that leaving the EU is fraught with difficulty. He also wants to be seen fighting for French interests - hence the hard line on fish. And on competition regulations. Mr Macron and other EU leaders don't want to grant the UK advantageous access to their single market if the UK is then free to undercut European businesses by slashing regulations and/or boosting UK enterprises with government subsidies that Brussels doesn't allow its members.
So how much will the EU curb its desire to keep the UK attached to its competition rules and standards in order to reach a deal? The UK says it's left the bloc, is now a sovereign nation and must be recognised by Brussels as such.
EU diplomats suggest it would help them ease up on their level-playing-field demands if the UK signed up to a dispute mechanism with teeth - meaning if either side breached the terms of their trade deal, then swift and hefty legal action could be taken.
One diplomat close to the negotiations rather patronisingly described this potential EU compromise position by comparing the UK to a toddler that doesn't want to eat its vegetables. He said the EU was now looking for alternative arrangements to get the UK to sign up to a deal. He described it as mixing things up to hide the vegetables from the toddler.
So will the UK sign up to a vegetable mush? To an aggressive dispute mechanism and to high-level common principles on state aid, for example, as well as a strong national regulator?
There are indications it might, but working out the technical details is "not to be underestimated" as a UK source put it.
British negotiators say they're frustrated that the EU has so far refused to start working on joint legal texts that can be sent backwards and forwards between the two sides as negotiations progress.
The most likely outcome from this week's EU summit as far as Brexit is concerned is that leaders will call for negotiations to step up in pace and intensity (if you think you've heard all this before, you are absolutely right).
France's Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian says EU-UK talks between now and mid-November will be decisive.
If the prime minister signs up to them.
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A chronology of key events:
| 1532-33 - Spanish conquistadores led by Francisco Pizarro defeat the Incas whose empire subsequently becomes part of the Vice-royalty of Peru with its capital in Lima.
1780 - Failed revolt against Spanish led by Tupac Amaru II, who claimed to be descended from last Inca emperor.
1821 - General Jose de San Martin captures Lima from Spanish and proclaims Peru independent.
1824 - Peru is last colony in South America to gain independence from Spain.
1836-39 - Peru and Bolivia join in short-lived confederation.
1849-74 - Some 80,000-100,000 Chinese workers arrived in Peru to do menial jobs such as collecting guano.
1866 - Peruvian-Spanish war.
1879-83 - Peru and Bolivia are defeated by Chile during the Pacific War in which Peru loses territory in the south to Chile.
1924 - Victor Raul Haya de la Torre sets up nationalist American Revolutionary Popular Alliance (APRA) in exile in Mexico.
1941 - Brief border war with Ecuador. Under the 1942 Rio Protocol Ecuador cedes some disputed territory to Peru.
Political see-saw
1945 - Civilian government led by centre-left APRA comes to power after free elections.
1948 - Military government led by General Manuel Odria installed following coup.
1963 - Peru returns to civilian rule with centrist Fernando Belaunde Terry as president.
1968 - Civilian government ousted in coup led by General Juan Velasco Alvarado, who introduces populist land reform programme and carries out large-scale nationalisations.
1975 - Velasco ousted in coup led by General Morales Bermudez.
1980 - Peru returns to civilian rule with re-election of Fernando Belaunde as president.
Shining Path, or Sendero Luminoso, guerrillas begin armed struggle.
1981 - Peru fights border war with Ecuador over Cordillera del Condor, which a 1942 protocol had given to Peru.
1982 - Deaths and "disappearances" begin to escalate following army crackdown on guerrillas and drug traffickers.
1985 - APRA candidate Alan Garcia Perez wins presidential election and begins campaign to remove military and police "old guard".
1987 - New Libertad movement led by writer Mario Vargas Llosa blocks plans to nationalise banks as Peru faces bankruptcy.
1988 - Peru seeks help from International Monetary Fund; Shining Path guerrilla campaign intensifies.
Fujimori era
1990 - More than 3,000 political murders reported.
Independent centre-right Alberto Fujimori elected president on anti-corruption platform.
Severe austerity and privatisation programmes launched as inflation reaches 400%.
1992 - Fujimori suspends constitution with army backing.
Shining Path leader arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment.
New single-chamber legislature elected.
1993 - New constitution adopted, enabling Fujimori to seek re-election.
1994 - Some 6,000 Shining Path guerrillas surrender to the authorities.
1995 - Fujimori re-elected to second term; people convicted of human rights abuses pardoned.
1996 - Tupac Amaru guerrillas seize hostages at Japanese ambassador's residence in a four-month siege.
1998 - Border agreement with Ecuador.
Bribery scandal
2000 September - Intelligence chief Vladimiro Montesinos embroiled in scandal after being caught on video apparently trying to bribe an opposition politician.
2000 November - Peruvian human rights ombudsman's office says 4,000 people had "disappeared" since 1980 in war against left-wing rebels.
2000 November - Congress sacks Fujimori and declares him "morally unfit" to govern; head of Congress Valentin Paniagua sworn in as interim president.
2001 March - Judge orders former president Fujimori, who has since fled to Japan, to face charges of dereliction of duty.
2001 April - New heads of the army, air force and navy sworn in after their predecessors resign over links to former president Fujimori.
2001 May - President of Supreme Court and nine senior judges dismissed over alleged links with fugitive former intelligence chief Vladimiro Montesinos. Deputy treasury minister resigns over allegations that he was instrumental in paying Montesinos $15m to leave Peru.
Toledo elected
2001 June - Presidential elections: centre-left economist Alejandro Toledo defeats former president Alan Garcia. Toledo is Peru's first president of native Indian origin.
2001 June - Former intelligence chief Vladimiro Montesinos is apprehended in Venezuela, flown back to Peru and held in a top-security prison.
2001 September - Supreme Court judge issues international arrest warrant for former president Alberto Fujimori, who is in self-exile in Japan.
2002 March - Nine people killed by bomb blast near US embassy in Lima - seen as attempt to disrupt forthcoming visit by President George W Bush.
Truth commission
2002 April - Truth and Reconciliation Commission begins public hearings about alleged atrocities committed during civil war of 1980s and 1990s.
2002 June - Violent protests against the privatisation of two power companies. President Toledo puts the sale on hold.
2002 July - Lawmakers accuse exiled former president Alberto Fujimori of treason.
Former intelligence chief Vladimiro Montesinos sentenced to nine years in prison for corruption.
2003 March-May - Vladimiro Montesinos sentenced to further five and eight-year jail sentences for abuse of power, embezzlement.
2003 August - Truth and Reconciliation Commission's inquiry into atrocities during 20-year war against Shining Path rebels concludes that an estimated 69,280 people were killed.
Toledo under pressure
2004 June - Former intelligence head Vladimiro Montesinos sentenced to further 15 years in jail for corruption, embezzlement, conspiracy.
2004 August - Inauguration of major gas pipeline project connecting jungle gas field with Lima.
2005 January - Four-day failed uprising by nationalist army reservists in the south: six people are killed and the interior minister resigns over the incident.
2005 May - Congressional commission finds President Toledo guilty of electoral fraud. Prosecutors say his party forged many of the signatures it used to register for the 2000 poll. Congress later votes not to impeach the president.
2005 July - Government begins to compensate guerrilla war victims; $800m is earmarked for the purpose.
2005 November - Former President Fujimori is arrested in Chile, after arriving there from Japan, pending extradition proceedings.
2005 December - Peru and the US reach a free trade agreement.
President declares a state of emergency in six central provinces after suspected Shining Path guerrillas kill eight police officers.
Garcia's election win
2006 June - Presidential elections: Alan Garcia, a former president, celebrates victory after a second round of voting. His rival, nationalist candidate Ollanta Humala, emerged as the front-runner in the first round.
2006 October - Former Shining Path rebel leader Abimael Guzman is sentenced to life in prison.
2007 April - Parliament grants emergency powers to President Garcia, allowing him to rule by decree on issues related to drug trafficking, organised crime.
2007 August - Earthquake hits coastal areas, killing hundreds and destroying churches and houses.
2007 September - Chile extradites former president Alberto Fujimori to Peru to face human rights and corruption charges.
2007 December - Fujimori goes on trial for the murder of 25 people killed by an army death squad during his rule. In a separate case he is sentenced to six years in jail for illegally ordering the search of an apartment.
2008 October - Cabinet resigns after members of the governing Apra party are implicated in a corruption scandal involving bribes for oil contracts. President Garcia appoints Yehude Simon, a leftist regional governor from outside the ruling party, as the new prime minister.
2009 April - Former President Alberto Fujimori is sentenced to 25 years in jail for ordering killings and kidnappings by security forces.
Amazon clashes
2009 June - At least 54 people are killed in clashes in the Amazon between security forces and indigenous people protesting against land ownership laws opening up oil and gas resources to foreign companies.
PM Yehude Simon resigns in response to the violence, after brokering talks with the protesters which lead to the repeal of the land laws.
2009 July - Trade unions and left-wing opposition groups hold nationwide protests against the government's pro-free trade policies.
President Garcia appoints a new prime minister, Javier Velasquez Quesquen, and replaces seven other ministers in a cabinet reshuffle aimed at restoring confidence in the government.
2009 October - Relations with Chile are strained by a Chilean military exercise staged close to the two countries' disputed border.
2009 November - Ties with Chile become even more tense after a Peruvian air force officer is accused of spying for the Chilean military.
Peru apologises for the first time to its citizens of African origin for centuries of "abuse, exclusion and discrimination".
2010 May - Peruvian indigenous leader Alberto Pizango is freed on bail pending trial a day after he was detained upon his return home from almost a year in exile. He is accused of inciting protests against planned oil and gas exploration in Peru's rainforest that turned deadly.
2011 January - Opening of controversial road connecting Brazil's Atlantic coast with Peru's Pacific seaboard.
2011 June - Ollanta Humala wins presidential elections in the run-off.
2011 December - Emergency declared in the north following protests against a proposed gold mining project.
2012 February - Shining Path rebel Comrade Artemio - one of the original central committee - is captured.
2012 April - Shining Path rebels capture, and later free, some 36 gas workers in the south.
Mine protests
2012 May - State of emergency declared in the southern province of Espinar, near Cusco, after anti-mining protests turn violent.
2012 July-September - Emergency declared in northern provinces to quell violent protests against the Conga mine project, which opponents argue will cause pollution and destroy water supplies.
President Humala appoints Juan Jimenez Mayor prime minister after Oscar Valdes quits over the death of five Conga protesters. Emergency is allowed to lapse in September.
2012 November - The last of the artefacts taken from Machu Picchu by US archaeologist Hiram Bingham are returned to Peru under a 2010 agreement. Mr Bingham brought the site to international attention in 1911.
2013 June - The last of the original Shining Path rebel leaders, Florindo Flores alias Comrade Artemio, is sentenced to life in prison on charges of terrorism, drug trafficking and money laundering.
2013 June - President Humala rejects a request to pardon the jailed former leader Alberto Fujimori on humanitarian grounds.
2013 September - UN report says Peru has become the world's main grower of coca leaves - the raw ingredient for cocaine.
Border ruling
2014 January - The United Nations' highest court rules on the maritime border dispute with Chile, awarding Peru parts of the Pacific Ocean but keeping rich fishing grounds in Chilean hands.
2014 July - Prime Minister Rene Cornejo resigns following allegations that an advisor offered money to discredit a political opponent. Ana Jara is appointed the sixth prime minister in fewer than three years.
2014 September - The Peruvian government appoints a commission to investigate illegal logging along the Peru-Brazil border in the Amazon rainforest, following the murder of four indigenous leaders.
2015 March - Peru withdraws its ambassador from Chile in a row over military espionage.
Prime Minister Ana Jara resigns after losing a vote of confidence in Congress over allegations that leading figures in business and politics were spied on.
2015 August - Congress approves legislation allowing the air force to shoot down small planes suspected of carrying illegal drugs.
2016 April - Pedro Kuczynski wins presidency, defeating Keiko Fujimori - daughter of jailed former president Alberto Fujimori.
2016 July - Emergency declared in half the country to deal with outbreak of Zika virus.
2017 December - Jailed former president Alberto Fujimori is pardoned on health grounds, prompting protests.
2018 March - Vice-President Martin Vizcarra is sworn in as president after the resignation of Pedro Pablo Kuczynski amid allegations of corruption.
2020 November - President Vizcarra resigns after being impeached over allegations of corruption.
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A chronology of key events
| 9th century - Founding of Kievan Rus, the first major Eastern Slavonic state. The traditional account, a matter of debate among historians, attributes its founding to the semi-legendary Viking (or Varangian) leader Oleg, ruler of Novgorod, who went on to seize Kiev which, owing to its strategic location on the Dnieper River, became the capital of Kievan Rus.
10th century - Rurik dynasty established, and the rule of Prince Vladimir the Great (Prince Volodymyr in Ukrainian) heralds start of a golden age. In 988 he accepts Orthodox Christianity and begins conversion of Kievan Rus, thus setting the course for Christianity in the east.
11th century - Kievan Rus reaches its peak under Yaroslav the Wise (grand prince 1019-1054), with Kyiv becoming eastern Europe's chief political and cultural centre.
Foreign domination
1237-40 - Mongols invade the Rus principalities, destroying many cities and ending Kievan Rus's power. The Tatars, as the Mongol invaders became known, establish the empire of the Golden Horde.
1349-1430 - Poland and later the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth gradually annex most of what is now western and northern Ukraine.
1441 - Crimean Khanate breaks free of the Golden Horde and conquers most of modern southern Ukraine.
1596 - Poland establishes Greek-Catholic or Uniate Church, in union with Rome, which comes to predominate in western Ukraine. The rest of Ukraine remains overwhelmingly Orthodox.
1648-1657- Cossack uprising against Polish rule establishes Hetmanate, regarded in Ukraine as the forerunner of the modern independent state.
1654 - Treaty of Pereyaslavl begins process of transforming Hetmanate into a vassal of Russia.
1686 - Treaty of Eternal Peace between Russia and Poland ends 37 years of war with the Ottoman Empire in what is now Ukraine, and partitions the Hetmanate.
1708-09 - Mazepa uprising attempts to free the eastern Hetmanate from Russian rule, during the prolonged Great Northern War that ranged Russia against Poland and Sweden at the time.
1764 - Russia abolishes the eastern Hetmanate and establishes the Little Russia governorate as a transitional entity until the full annexation of the territory in 1781.
Russian rule
1772-1795 - Most of western Ukraine is absorbed into the Russian Empire through the partitions of Poland.
1783 - Russia takes over southern Ukraine through the annexation of the Crimean Khanate.
19th century - National cultural reawakening sees the development of Ukrainian literature, education, and historical research. Habsburg-run Galicia, acquired during the partitions of Poland, becomes a centre for Ukrainian political and cultural activity, as Russia bans the use of the Ukrainian language on its own territory.
Rise of Soviet power
1917 - Central Rada council set up in Kyiv following collapse of Russian Empire.
1918 - Ukraine declares independence. Numerous rival governments vie for control for some or all of Ukraine during ensuing civil war.
1921 - Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic established when Russian Red Army conquers two-thirds of Ukraine. Western third becomes part of Poland.
1920s - The Soviet government encourages Ukrainian language and culture within strict political bounds, although this process is reversed in the 1930s.
1932 - Millions die in a man-made famine during Stalin's collectivisation campaign, known in Ukraine as the Holodomor.
1939 - Western Ukraine is annexed by the Soviet Union under the terms of the Nazi-Soviet Pact.
1941 - Ukraine suffers terrible wartime devastation as Nazis occupy the country until 1944.
More than five million Ukrainians die fighting Nazi Germany. Most of Ukraine's 1.5 million Jews are killed by the Nazis.
1944 - Stalin deports 200,000 Crimean Tatars to Siberia and Central Asia following false accusations of collaboration with Nazi Germany.
1954 - In a surprise move, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev transfers the Crimean peninsula to Ukraine.
Armed resistance to Soviet rule ends with capture of last commander of Ukrainian Insurgent Army.
1960s - Increase in covert opposition to Soviet rule, leading to repression of dissidents in 1972.
1986 - A reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power station explodes, sending a radioactive plume across Europe. Desperate efforts are made to contain the damaged reactor within a huge concrete cover.
Independence
1991 - Ukraine declares independence following attempted coup in Moscow.
1990s - About 250,000 Crimean Tatars and their descendants return to Crimea following collapse of Soviet Union.
1994 - Presidential elections: Leonid Kuchma succeeds Leonid Kravchuk, conducts policy of balancing overtures to the West and alliance with Russia.
1996 - New, democratic constitution adopted, and hryvnya currency introduced.
2000 - Chernobyl nuclear power plant is shut down, 14 years after the accident. Well over ten thousand people died as a direct result of the explosion, the health of millions more was affected.
2002 March - General election results in hung parliament. Parties opposed to President Kuchma allege widespread electoral fraud.
2002 May - Government announces decision to launch formal bid to join Nato.
Orange Revolution
2004 November - Opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko launches mass protest campaign over rigged elections that gave victory to pro-Russian candidate Viktor Yanukovych. Supreme Court later annuls poll result.
2005 December - Viktor Yushchenko becomes president after winning December election re-run. Relations with Russia sour, leading to frequent disputes over gas supplies and pipeline transit fees.
2006 July - Socialist Party abandons Orange Revolution allies to form coalition with Viktor Yanukovych's Party of Regions and the Communists.
2008 October - Global financial crisis leads to decline in demand for steel, causing price of one of the country's main exports to collapse. Value of Ukrainian currency falls sharply and investors pull out.
Yanukovych comeback
2010 February - Viktor Yanukovych is declared winner of second round of presidential election.
2010 June - Parliament votes to abandon Nato membership aspirations.
2011 October - A court jails former Yulia Tymoshenko for abuse of power over a gas deal with Russia in 2009.
Maidan revolution
2013 November - Tens of thousands of protesters take to the streets to protest at the government's sudden decision to abandon plans to sign an association agreement with the EU, blaming Russian pressure.
2014 February - Security forces kill at least 77 protesters in Kyiv. President Yanukovych flees to Russia, opposition takes over.
2014 March - Russian forces annex Crimea, prompting biggest East-West showdown since Cold War. US and European Union impose ever-harsher sanctions on Russia.
2014 April - Pro-Russian armed groups seize parts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions on Russian border. Government launches military operation in response.
2014 May - Leading businessman Petro Poroshenko wins presidential election on pro-Western platform.
2014 July - Pro-Russian forces shoot down Malaysian airliner over eastern Ukraine conflict zone, killing all 298 people on board.
2014 September - Nato confirms Russian troops and heavy military equipment entering eastern Ukraine.
2014 October - Parliamentary elections produce convincing majority for pro-Western parties.
European Union association
2015 February - Germany and France broker a new Donbass deal at talks in Belarus, resulting in a tenuous ceasefire.
2016 - Economy returns to fragile growth after two years of turmoil.
2017 July - Ukraine's association agreement with the European Union is ratified by all signatories, and comes into force on 1 September.
2018 May - Russian President Putin officially opens a bridge linking southern Russia to Crimea, an action Ukraine calls illegal.
2018 October - The Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople agrees to allow Ukraine to set up its own Orthodox Church independent of Russian ecclesiastical supervision.
President Zelensky takes office
2019 April-July - Television comedian Volodymyr Zelensky wins presidential election run-off in a landslide victory over incumbent Petro Poroshenko.
He takes office in May, and his Servant of the People party wins early parliamentary elections in July.
2019 August - Parliament appoints President Zelensky's aide Oleksiy Honcharuk prime minister.
2019 September - Russia and Ukraine swap prisoners captured in the wake of Moscow's seizure of Crimea and intervention in the Donbass.
2019 October - Ukraine becomes embroiled US impeachment row over allegations of President Trump attempting to put pressure on the country over investigating possible Democrat president rival Joe Biden.
2020 March - President Zelensky appoints former businessman Denys Shmyhal prime minister with a mandate to stimulate industrial revival and improve tax receipts.
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A chronology of key events:
| 1838-42 - British forces invade, install King Shah Shujah. He is assassinated in 1842. British and Indian troops are massacred during retreat from Kabul.
1878-80 - Second Anglo-Afghan War. A treaty gives Britain control of Afghan foreign affairs.
1919 - Emir Amanullah Khan declares independence from British influence.
1926-29 - Amanullah tries to introduce social reforms, which however stir civil unrest. He flees.
1933 - Zahir Shah becomes king and Afghanistan remains a monarchy for next four decades.
1953 - General Mohammed Daud becomes prime minister. Turns to Soviet Union for economic and military assistance. Introduces social reforms, such as abolition of purdah (practice of secluding women from public view).
1963 - Mohammed Daud forced to resign as prime minister.
1964 - Constitutional monarchy introduced - but leads to political polarisation and power struggles.
1973 - Mohammed Daud seizes power in a coup and declares a republic. Tries to play off USSR against Western powers.
1978 - General Daud is overthrown and killed in a pro-Soviet coup. The People's Democratic Party comes to power but is paralysed by violent infighting and faces opposition by US-backed mujahideen groups.
Soviet intervention
1979 December - Soviet Army invades and props up communist government.
1980 - Babrak Karmal installed as ruler, backed by Soviet troops. But opposition intensifies with various mujahideen groups fighting Soviet forces. US, Pakistan, China, Iran and Saudi Arabia supply money and arms to the mujahideen.
1985 - Mujahideen come together in Pakistan to form alliance against Soviet forces. Half of Afghan population now estimated to be displaced by war, with many fleeing to neighbouring Iran or Pakistan.
1986 - US begins supplying mujahideen with Stinger missiles, enabling them to shoot down Soviet helicopter gunships. Babrak Karmal replaced by Najibullah as head of Soviet-backed regime.
1988 - Afghanistan, USSR, the US and Pakistan sign peace accords and Soviet Union begins pulling out troops.
Red Army quits
1989 - Last Soviet troops leave, but civil war continues as mujahideen push to overthrow Najibullah.
1992 - Najibullah's government toppled, but a devastating civil war follows.
1996 - Taliban seize control of Kabul and introduce hard-line version of Islam, banning women from work, and introducing Islamic punishments, which include stoning to death and amputations.
1997 - Taliban recognised as legitimate rulers by Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. They now control about two-thirds of country.
1998 - US launches missile strikes at suspected bases of militant Osama bin Laden, accused of bombing US embassies in Africa.
1999 - UN imposes an air embargo and financial sanctions to force Afghanistan to hand over Osama bin Laden for trial.
2001 September - Ahmad Shah Masood, leader of the main opposition to the Taliban - the Northern Alliance - is assassinated.
US-led invasion
2001 October - US-led bombing of Afghanistan begins following the September 11 attacks on the United States. Anti-Taliban Northern Alliance forces enter Kabul shortly afterwards.
2001 December - Afghan groups agree deal in Bonn, Germany for interim government.
Hamid Karzai is sworn in as head of an interim power-sharing government.
2002 January - Deployment of first contingent of foreign peacekeepers - the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) - marking the start of a protracted fight against the Taliban.
2002 April - Former king Zahir Shah returns, but makes no claim to the throne and dies in 2007.
2002 June - Loya Jirga, or grand council, elects Hamid Karzai as interim head of state. Karzai picks members of his administration which is to serve until 2004.
2003 August - Nato takes control of security in Kabul, its first-ever operational commitment outside Europe.
Elections
2004 January - Loya Jirga adopts new constitution which provides for strong presidency.
2004 October-November - Presidential elections. Hamid Karzai is declared winner.
2005 September - Afghans vote in first parliamentary elections in more than 30 years.
2005 December - Parliament opens with warlords and strongmen in most of the seats.
2006 October - Nato assumes responsibility for security across the whole of Afghanistan, taking command in the east from a US-led coalition force.
2007 August - Opium production has soared to a record high, the UN reports.
2008 June - President Karzai warns that Afghanistan will send troops into Pakistan to fight militants if Islamabad fails to take action against them.
2008 July - Suicide bomb attack on Indian embassy in Kabul kills more than 50.
2008 September - US President George Bush sends an extra 4,500 US troops to Afghanistan, in a move he described as a "quiet surge".
2009 January - US Defence Secretary Robert Gates tells Congress that Afghanistan is new US administration's "greatest test".
2009 February - Nato countries pledge to increase military and other commitments in Afghanistan after US announces dispatch of 17,000 extra troops.
New US approach
2009 March - US President Barack Obama unveils new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan. An extra 4,000 US personnel will train and bolster the Afghan army and police and there will be support for civilian development.
2009 August - Presidential and provincial elections are marred by widespread Taliban attacks, patchy turnout and claims of serious fraud.
2009 October - Mr Karzai declared winner of August presidential election, after second-placed opponent Abdullah Abdullah pulls out before the second round.
2009 December - US President Obama decides to boost US troop numbers in Afghanistan by 30,000, bringing total to 100,000. He says US will begin withdrawing its forces by 2011.
An Al-Qaeda double agent kills seven CIA agents in a suicide attack on a US base in Khost.
2010 February - Nato-led forces launch major offensive, Operation Moshtarak, in bid to secure government control of southern Helmand province.
2010 July - Whistleblowing website Wikileaks publishes thousands of classified US military documents relating to Afghanistan.
General David Petraeus takes command of US, ISAF forces.
2010 August - Dutch troops quit.
Karzai says private security firms - accused of operating with impunity - must cease operations. He subsequently waters down the decree.
2010 September - Parliamentary polls marred by Taliban violence, widespread fraud and a long delay in announcing results.
2010 November - Nato - at summit in Lisbon - agrees plan to hand control of security to Afghan forces by end of 2014.
2011 January - President Karzai makes first official state visit to Russia by an Afghan leader since the end of the Soviet invasion in 1989.
2011 February - Number of civilians killed since the 2001 invasion hit record levels in 2010, Afghanistan Rights Monitor reports.
2011 April - Burning of Koran by a US pastor prompts country-wide protests in which foreign UN workers and several Afghans are killed.
Some 500 mostly Taliban prisoners break out of prison in Kandahar.
2011 July - President's half-brother and Kandahar governor Ahmad Wali Karzai is killed in Taliban campaign against prominent figures.
2011 September - Ex-president Burhanuddin Rabbani - a go-between in talks with the Taliban - is assassinated.
2011 October - As relations with Pakistan worsen after a series of attacks, Afghanistan and India sign a strategic partnership to expand co-operation in security and development.
Military pact
2011 November - President Karzai wins the endorsement of tribal elders to negotiate a 10-year military partnership with the US at a loya jirga traditional assembly. The proposed pact will see US troops remain after 2014, when foreign troops are due to leave the country.
2011 December - At least 58 people are killed in twin attacks at a Shia shrine in Kabul and a Shia mosque in Mazar-i-Sharif.
Pakistan and the Taleban boycott the scheduled Bonn Conference on Afghanistan. Pakistan refuses to attend after a Nato air strike killed Pakistani soldiers on the Afghan border.
2012 January - Taliban agree to open office in Dubai as a move towards peace talks with the US and the Afghan government.
2012 February - At least 30 people are killed in protests about the burning of copies of the Koran at the US Bagram airbase. US officials believed Taliban prisoners were using the books to pass messages, and that they were extremist texts not Korans. Two soldiers are also killed in reprisal attacks.
2012 March - US Army Sgt Robert Bales is accused of killing 16 civilians in an armed rampage in the Panjwai district of Kandahar.
2012 April - Taliban announce "spring offensive" with audacious attack on the diplomatic quarter of Kabul. The government blamed the Haqqani Network. Security forces kill 38 militants.
Nato withdrawal plan
2012 May - Nato summit endorses the plan to withdraw foreign combat troops by the end of 2014.
New French President Francois Hollande says France will withdraw its combat mission by the end of 2012 - a year earlier than planned.
Arsala Rahmani of the High Peace Council is shot dead in Kabul. A former Taliban minister, he was crucial in reaching out to rebel commanders. The Taliban deny responsibility.
2012 July - Tokyo donor conference pledges $16bn in civilian aid to Afghanistan up to 2016, with US, Japan, Germany and UK supplying bulk of funds. Afghanistan agrees to new conditions to counter corruption.
2012 August - The US military discipline six soldiers for accidentally burning copies of the Koran and other religious texts in Afghanistan. They will not face criminal prosecution. Three US Marines are also disciplined for a video in which the bodies of dead Taliban fighters were urinated on.
2012 September - US hands over Bagram high-security jail to the Afghan government, although it retains control over some foreign prisoners until March 2013.
The US also suspends training new police recruits in order to carry out checks on possible ties to Taliban following series of attacks on foreign troops by apparent police and Afghan soldiers.
2013 February - President Karzai and Pakistan's Asif Ali Zardari agree to work for an Afghan peace deal within six months after talks hosted by Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron. They back the opening of an Afghan office in Doha and urge the Taliban to do the same for talks to take place.
2013 March - Two former Kabul Bank chiefs, Sherkhan Farnood and Khalilullah Ferozi, are jailed for the multi-million dollar fraud that almost led to its collapse and that of the entire Afghan banking system in 2010.
2013 June - Afghan army takes command of all military and security operations from Nato forces.
President Karzai suspends security talks with the US after Washington announces it plans to hold direct talks with the Taliban. Afghanistan insists on conducting the talks with the Taliban in Qatar itself.
2014 January - Taliban suicide squad hits a restaurant in Kabul's diplomatic quarter, the worst attack on foreign civilians since 2001. The 13 foreign victims include IMF country head.
2014 April - The presidential election produces an inconclusive result and goes on to a second round between Abdullah Abdullah and Ashraf Ghani.
2014 June - Second round of presidential election is held, with more than 50 reported killed in various incidents during the vote.
2014 July - Election officials begin recount of all votes cast in June's presidential run-off, as part of a US-mediated deal to end dispute between candidates over widespread claims of fraud.
Election deal
2014 September - The two rivals for the Afghan presidency, Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah, sign a power-sharing agreement, following a two-month audit of disputed election results. Ashraf Ghani is sworn in as president.
2014 October - The US and Britain end their combat operations in Afghanistan.
Opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan reaches an all-time high, according to a US report
2014 December - NATO formally ends its 13-year combat mission in Afghanistan, handing over to Afghan forces. Despite the official end to Isaf's combat role, violence persists across much of the country, with 2014 said to be the bloodiest year in Afghanistan since 2001.
2015 January - NATO-led follow-on mission "Resolute Support" gets underway, with some 12,000 personnel to provide further training and support for Afghan security forces.
Islamic State (IS) group emerges in eastern Afghanistan and within a few months captures a large swathe of Taliban-controlled areas in Nangarhar province.
2015 March - US President Barack Obama announces that his country will delay its troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, following a request from President Ashraf Ghani.
The lynching of a woman wrongly accused of burning a Koran in Kabul provokes widespread revulsion and criticism of hard-line clerics. Police face accusations of doing too little to save her. The incident leads to widespread protests against the treatment of women. Four men are later convicted of murder.
Taliban offensives
2015 May - Taliban representatives and Afghan officials hold informal peace talks in Qatar. Both sides agree to continue the talks at a later date, though the Taliban insist they will not stop fighting until all foreign troops leave the country.
2015 July - Taliban admits that reclusive founder, Mullah Omar, died a few years ago, and appoints Mullah Akhter Mansour as his replacement.
2015 September - Taliban briefly capture major northern city of Kunduz in their most significant advance since being forced from power in 2001.
2015 October - Powerful earthquake kills more than 80 people in northeast of country.
2015 October - US President Barack Obama announces that 9,800 US troops will remain in Afghanistan until the end of 2016, backtracking on an earlier pledge to pull all but 1,000 troops from the country.
2015 November - A new Taliban splinter group, headed by Mullah Rasool, announces its presence in southern Afghanistan. However, the group is totally crushed by the mainstream Taliban by spring 2016.
2015 December - Taliban make bid to capture Sangin, a town and district in Helmand Province. US warplanes deploy in support of Afghan security forces' attempt to repel insurgents.
2015 December - NATO extends its "Resolute Support" follow-on mission by 12 months to the end of 2016.
2016 - Over one million Afghans are on the go during the year, either due to internal displacement because of the war, or are forced to repatriate by Pakistan, Iran and the European Union, according to the United Nations.
Heavy US air strikes reverse Islamic State's gains in the east, and the group is cornered in a few districts in Nangarhar.
2016 May - New Taliban leader Mullah Mansour is killed in a US drone attack in Pakistan's Baluchestan province.
2016 July - US President Barack Obama says 8,400 US troops will remain in Afghanistan into 2017 in light of the "precarious security situation". NATO also agrees to maintain troop numbers and reiterates a funding pledge for local security forces until 2020.
2016 August to October - Taliban advance to the outskirts of Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand, and to the northern city of Kunduz. The group has brought much of the two provinces under its control since the bulk of NATO forces withdrew by end of 2014.
2016 September - The Afghan government signs a peace agreement with the militant group Hezb-e-Islami and grants immunity to the group's leader, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.
2017 January - A bomb attack in Kandahar kills six UAE diplomats.
2017 February - Rise in Islamic State activities reported in a number of northern and southern provinces.
2017 March - Thirty people are killed and more than 50 wounded in an attack by so-called Islamic State on a military hospital in Kabul.
2017 June - Islamic State militants capture the mountainous region of Tora Bora in Nangarhar province, which was formerly used as a base by the late al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden.
2017 August - US President Donald Trump says he's sending more troops to fight a resurgent Taliban.
2018 January - Bomb-laden ambulance explodes in Kabul, killing more than 100 people. It is one of ongoing attacks attributed to the Taliban.
2019 September - Protracted peace talks between the Taliban and the United States break down.
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Sam Smith's debut album has made history. | In the Lonely Hour has been in the UK top 10 for 67 weeks in a row - that's the longest unbroken run of any debut album.
It's not left the top 10 since it was released in May 2014, when it debuted at number one with opening week sales of 101,000.
The chart record was previously held by Emeli Sande, with her debut album Our Version Of Events.
Her album reached 66 consecutive weeks in the top 10 between February 2012 and May 2013.
Prior to Emeli, the record was held for almost 50 years by The Beatles' Please Please Me (62 weeks).
The record comes a day after the singer performed at the BBC Radio Theatre in London.
During the set he said it was the last time he would be playing the album live and that the next time he performs a full show in England, it will be with his second album.
"What can I even say to this? I am completely and utterly moved and overwhelmed at this achievement," Sam said.
"I am forever thankful to my team but most importantly to the British public for making this happen and buying my album.
"This moment is one to tell the grandkids and maybe their grandkids."
Earlier this year, the record was the first number one on the Official Albums Chart following the inclusion of streaming into the chart.
During its record-breaking stint in the chart, In the Lonely Hour has had six separate spells at the top spot, with four singles going into the top 10 singles chart.
It has sold 8.5m copies worldwide and was the only album to sell one million in both the UK and US last year.
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American Airlines is pulling out of Birmingham Airport. | The airline has operated a daily service to New York since May last year but will stop flights from 6 January.
Birmingham Airport described the decision as "disappointing", and said it was down to passenger demand.
"Passengers booked on AA flights after 6 January will be contacted by AA to make alternative arrangements or arrange a refund," the airport spokesman said.
More updates on this and other stories in Birmingham
But they added that the airport was "optimistic that another carrier will fill this gap shortly".
"There remains a strong demand from both the Midlands and North American market wanting to access these important regions and cities."
The airport said passengers could still travel non-stop to New York Newark with United Airlines, and there continue to be regular connections to North America with several other carriers.
A spokesman for American Airlines said: "As the world's largest airline, American constantly evaluates our network to ensure we are maximizing our fleet and profitability while matching customer demand.
"Many factors influence network planning decisions; route performance is monitored over time to ensure that American is better positioning itself for long-term success against global competition."
The airline said it remained committed to serving the UK market and would continue offering flights to the US from four other UK airports.
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Yemen is in turmoil. | By Frank GardnerBBC security correspondent
Both its president and government are reported to have resigned amid a stand-off with Shia rebels, the Houthis, who have taken control of the capital.
The army has all but melted away but the Sunni tribes, encouraged by al-Qaeda, are busy mobilising to confront the Houthis as they push east.
The entire framework for one of Washington's most important security partners in a dangerous region is now in serious danger of falling apart.
Why does Yemen matter to Washington and the West? After all, this is not Kuwait. Yemen is not a rich country, in fact it is the poorest in the Arab world. Its dwindling oil exports are expected to run out altogether before 2020.
But Yemen sits at the extreme south-west of the Arabian Peninsula, right on the strategic Bab El Mandeb Strait, separating the Middle East from Africa, where an estimated 20,000 ships pass annually through the strategic bottleneck between the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea and beyond, the Suez Canal.
Yemen's second city, Aden, was once a major bunkering port for ships making the long passage from Europe to India. Today, sadly, that city is a sleepy backwater where flamingos feed on deserted mudflats as most vessels steam past, giving it a wide berth.
The US Navy in particular has avoided it since 2000 when al-Qaeda suicide bombers rammed a boat full of explosives into a billion-dollar destroyer, the USS Cole, killing 17 sailors.
For most Yemenis, their daily preoccupation is simply how to get by in a crumbling economy beset with corruption. Many rely on remittances sent from relatives working in the Gulf.
But for Washington there is a different preoccupation: Yemen is home to what Western intelligence analysts consider to be the most dangerous franchise of al-Qaeda. AQAP stands for al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, an alliance formed in 2009 between violent Yemeni and Saudi Islamists.
International reach
AQAP's local focus is on seizing and holding tribal territory in the under-governed spaces of Marib, al-Bayda and Shabwa provinces.
Periodically it sends suicide bombers into the capital, Sanaa, to kill dozens of policemen and other security officials. It has also carried out the abduction and assassination of intelligence officials, sometimes using assassins on motorbikes.
But AQAP continues to grab the attention of the CIA and the Pentagon's JSOC (Joint Special Operations Command) because of its international reach.
Earlier this month it claimed to be behind the attack on the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris, although it has yet to offer any substantive proof.
But three times now AQAP has successfully smuggled viable bombs onboard aircraft on international flights. The first exploded in or on an al-Qaeda operative in Saudi Arabia in 2009, narrowly missing the Saudi counter-terrorism chief.
The next got as far as Detroit where the so-called "underpants bomber" tried unsuccessfully to light a device concealed in his underwear as the plane descended to land.
And then in 2010, AQAP smuggled bombs hidden in printer ink toner cartridges on US-bound cargo planes that got as far as East Midlands Airport and Dubai before an intelligence tipoff alerted the authorities.
The group has vowed to keep trying and it is believed they have shared their bomb making expertise with cells in northern Syria.
Covert operations
Washington has spent more than a decade helping the Yemeni government build up its counter-terrorism capabilities.
US Special Forces have been discreetly training the Yemenis at a base outside the capital, while the US, Saudi Arabia and Yemen all co-operate on conducting airstrikes by unmanned Reaper drones on suspected militants in remote areas.
The drone strikes are highly controversial and have killed dozens of civilians over the years, according to local tribes. In 2011, one killed a US citizen - AQAP's Anwar Al-Awlaki.
But the current political and security upheaval in Yemen means that a question mark now hangs over who Washington should partner with and for how long its security cooperation can last in this troubled country.
The nightmare scenario, both for Washington, its Gulf Arab allies, and for Yemen, is that the country erupts into a civil war pitting the Shia Houthis - suspected of being backed by Iran - against Sunni tribes backed by al-Qaeda.
Little wonder that the US Navy now has two amphibious warships poised offshore to evacuate its nationals if the situation continues to deteriorate.
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Disney has a new princess. | Well, a new actor playing an existing princess, to be precise.
Halle Bailey has been announced as Ariel in Disney's latest live-action remake, The Little Mermaid.
She's probably best known as half of duo Chloe x Halle, has a lot of celeb fans and can count Beyonce as a mentor.
So what do you need to know about the 19-year-old actress and singer?
She's one half of singing sisters Chloe x Halle
Halle is the younger sibling in the R&B duo - they started posting songs to YouTube as teenagers. Chloe is 21.
Originally from Atlanta in the US, they moved to LA with their family at around the same time they started posting their songs.
They performed at the 2019 Super Bowl pre-game show and were nominated for two Grammys this year, for best new artist and best urban contemporary album.
And the sisters have connections with Disney already - their song Warrior was on the soundtrack for Ava DuVernay's 2018 Disney film A Wrinkle in Time.
She's got Beyonce to thank for a lot
Beyonce is a bit of a fairy godmother to Halle and Chloe.
After they posted a Beyonce cover to YouTube, they were among the first signings to her record label Parkwood Entertainment.
They featured in Beyonce's video for the song All Night and have supported her on some of the dates of her world tours.
As a three-year-old, Chloe played a young Beyonce in the 2003 film The Fighting Temptations.
And Halle will follow in Bey's footsteps as a Disney actor - as Queen B voices Nala in the upcoming Lion King remake.
She's got a lot of celebrity fans
Celebs have been flocking to congratulate Halle for landing the role of Ariel.
Ariana Grande wrote on Instagram: "I can't express how happy and excited I am at all."
Other stars who've commented on Halle's Instagram post congratulating her include Willow Smith, Chrissy Teigen, Jordin Sparks and Gigi Hadid.
And almost-namesake Halle Berry had a simple message: "Halles get it DONE."
She's an actor as well as a singer
Halle and Chloe star in Black-ish spin-off Grown-ish.
They play athletic twins Jazlyn and Skylar Foster, who go to college with Yara Shahidi's character Zoey Johnson.
Yara was full of praise for Halle's new role - she posted on Instagram: "You have expanded the world of powerful princesses in so many ways."
She's a self-taught musician
Halle told Time magazine last year that her family moved from Atlanta to LA "on the dream of living out what we want to do".
"We knew that being out here was definitely better for the music scene," she said.
In the same interview, her sister Chloe said: "From 10 and eight we just wrote our own songs, and that's how we learned."
They learned instruments and songwriting through YouTube videos and online tutorials, thanks to their dad.
Chloe added: "Ever since we were little girls, our dad instilled in us the importance of not having to rely on anyone, and having a do-it-yourself attitude."
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Is this London's future? | Tom EdwardsTransport correspondent, London@BBCTomEdwardson Twitter
It has been contentious and controversial, but part of the mayor's flagship east-west cycle superhighway is nearing completion.
These photos give you an impression of what some streets in London will look like when they have been converted to protect cyclists.
Of course, not everyone will like road space being given over to cyclists. Many drivers fear the works and the scheme will create congestion for vehicles.
The Licensed Taxi Drivers Association (LTDA) still has a judicial review pending on this scheme; I'm told the chances of that succeeding are very slim.
Cyclists will love this space and a cycle lane running straight up to Parliament will invigorate cycling campaigners who'll say "if it can be done here, it can be done anywhere".
The full scheme along Embankment is not yet complete but is due to open in summer 2016.
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It sounds eminently reasonable. | Mark DevenportPolitical editor, Northern Ireland@markdevenporton Twitter
Under the contentious Brexit backstop, the people of Northern Ireland were expected to abide by EU trade rules.
The intention was to smooth north-south trade and ensure no return to a hard border.
However as citizens of a country which after Brexit would have withdrawn from the EU, voters in Northern Ireland would have no representatives in the European Parliament and no democratic say in the regulations which would stipulate how their farms and businesses operated.
The DUP called it anti-democratic and Boris Johnson agreed.
There should be no EU rules applied without the consent of those required to follow them.
But how do you gauge the consent of the people of Northern Ireland? The answer is less straightforward than some might imagine.
Under the Good Friday Agreement, the Stormont Assembly operates a system known as "parallel consent".
To move forward with any particularly controversial proposal, you need to get the backing of a majority of Assembly members who designate themselves as unionists and a majority of MLAs who identify as nationalists.
This protection was built into the Assembly back in 1998 as a reassurance to the Irish nationalist minority.
They felt excluded by their treatment during the era of the old unionist dominated Stormont parliament, which governed Northern Ireland from the 1920s to the early 1970s.
So the cross community voting system was designed to reassure nationalists the new Assembly would be different.
But with changing politics and a gradual increase in the Catholic population, the balance at Stormont has shifted. Unionists are no longer in the majority. "Parallel consent" and a veto system known as the "petition of concern" have been used increasingly by unionists as a way to block measures they regard as unpalatable.
So when nationalists and the cross community Alliance party, who favour the backstop, looked at Boris Johnson's latest blueprint, they regarded the section on consent as code for a unionist veto.
'U-turn'
The DUP re-enforced that view.
Some other unionists criticised them for performing a U-turn by contemplating an economic border between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
They retorted that any regulatory divergence would be subject to the approval of the Assembly so - under parallel consent - could only get the go ahead if unionism agreed.
Boris Johnson told MPs giving Stormont this new responsibility should act as an incentive to get the Assembly back up and running.
The Stormont institutions have been suspended for more than two-and-a-half years after a scandal which brought down its power sharing executive.
But the leader of the centre ground Alliance party, Naomi Long, reached the opposite conclusion from the prime minister.
She tweeted that if his deal is implemented she is concerned Stormont will not return.
Both the Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and his deputy Simon Coveney, insist they won't support any proposal which means one party or indeed a minority in Northern Ireland end up making decisions for the majority.
They point out that whilst the DUP were enthusiastic Brexiteers, who are likely to be sceptical about convergence with EU trade rules, 56% of voters in Northern Ireland wanted to remain in the EU.
So how else to measure consent?
A former Labour Northern Ireland Minister suggested to Boris Johnson he should hold a referendum in Northern Ireland on his latest proposals.
The prime minister waved that aside, citing the divisions caused by other recent referenda in the UK.
However on a couple of occasions Mr Johnson did seem to acknowledge the democratic problems involved in subjecting a trade deal with the EU to the cross community voting test at Stormont every four years.
He told MPs the "mechanism of consent is clearly vital" adding "we must get the mechanism of consent right so both communities feel reassured about it".
This will be easier said than done. Any shift towards traditional majority decision making might reassure nationalists and the EU.
But if they cannot wield a veto at Stormont, why should the DUP back the all island regulatory zone envisaged under the Johnson blueprint?
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Sunday 1 October 2017 in Manchester. | By Nick EardleyBBC political correspondent
Prime Minister Theresa May stands beside Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson at a fringe meeting at the Conservative conference.
Moments later, Mrs May held Ms Davidson's hand aloft and, in a rare display of euphoria, shouted into a microphone: "Together we saved the union".
Things have changed since then.
In 2017, the Scottish Tories had just had their best general election result in years.
Mrs May and Ms Davidson were close - and on the same page when it came to tactics over independence.
Ms Davidson was invited to cabinet meetings to talk about the issue.
Fast forward to now and the relationship between Scottish and UK Tories is strained.
In recent months, the Scottish Tories have been trying to distance themselves from Boris Johnson - and the new Scottish Tory leader Douglas Ross has launched some thinly-veiled attacks on senior Tories in London, accusing them of defeatism and disinterest when it comes to the union.
Many, he has warned, want a UK government focussed on England.
Mr Ross has cast doubt on whether the PM is an asset to his party in Scotland.
That relationship will not have been helped by the prime minister telling MPs privately that devolution had been a disaster.
No 10 has insisted he is a fan of devolution - he was London mayor, of course - but not when it's "used by separatists and nationalists to break up the UK".
But Mr Ross was forced to come out and say the PM doesn't believe devolution is a problem and to urge against "distractions".
There are many in Whitehall who find devolution tricky.
There are more still who believe Nicola Sturgeon has communicated well during the pandemic - and that's increased support for independence.
There are some in Tory circles who remain sceptical about devolution and think it has given nationalism a platform.
But very few in the public eye would argue against the Scottish Parliament.
And the timing of this row is far from ideal for Conservatives in Scotland.
In six months, there will be another crucial Holyrood election.
The SNP look set for a landslide win - based on a number of polls - and will use that victory to demand another independence referendum.
As we've reported before, the UK government strategy is to argue Scotland is served well by having two governments, talking up more of what the UK government does, particularly through the Treasury - in essence, that devolution works.
But the SNP Scottish government have argued for months that the UK government wants to interfere in devolved issues - they call the Internal Market Bill a "power grab" which will undermine devolution, for example.
And now, for the next few months, they are likely to point to Mr Johnson's words as an example that Whitehall doesn't like devolved governments having power.
Independence supporters will also point to 2014 - where Holyrood was promised extensive powers if Scotland rejected independence.
It has had more powers since, but Mr Johnson also said last night that he didn't see the case for further devolution, just at a time when some are saying exactly that could help stop the rise in support for independence.
'It certainly doesn't help'
So, this creates an awkward debate for Scottish Tories which they'd rather not be having.
As one told me this morning: "It certainly doesn't help".
But it also shows just how bitterly divided unionists are.
Both Labour and the Liberal Democrats are absolutely furious with Mr Johnson's comments and have been the most outspoken critics today.
The Lib Dem MP Alistair Carmichael, who was Scottish Secretary in the coalition years at the time of the 2014 referendum, told me for BBC Radio 4's World at One: "Boris Johnson is now, I think, probably the greatest threat to the continuation of the United Kingdom - much bigger than Nicola Sturgeon or Alex Salmond could ever hope to be."
He added: "Let's not pretend this is anything other than a bad moment for those of us who want to remain part of a United Kingdom".
This matters because if there is another independence referendum, it's almost impossible, as things stand, to see Labour and Lib Dem politicians working with Conservative unionists like they did in 2014.
The unionist case is split between those who think the answer is more powers and those who don't.
The SNP has its troubles too.
There are divisions in the party and it's record in government is coming under scrutiny ahead of May's vote. More on that soon.
But it is riding high in the polls and the Conservatives - and other unionists - desperately need to claw back some ground.
Unforced errors do not help - especially from the prime minister.
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This is what a rout looks like. | By Anthony ZurcherEditor, Echo Chambers
As was mostly expected, the Republican Party won enough Senate seats to take control of the upper chamber of Congress, although across the board the margins of victory were larger than pre-election polls had indicated.
Beneath the Senate wave, however, there was another more surprising conservative surge. In governor race after governor race, Democrats went down to defeat.
President Barack Obama had predicted that his party wouldn't do well on Tuesday, thanks largely to many of the Senate races being located in conservative leaning states.
"There are a lot of states that are being contested where they just tend to tilt Republican," he said in a radio interview.
Such was not the case in the governor contests, however. Elections were held in nine states that President Barack Obama carried in both of his presidential races, and Republicans prevailed in eight of them.
The results will have significant implications not just for how those states are governed, but for the shape of the electoral map and the personalities involved as the 2016 presidential race gears up in the coming months.
In national battleground states like Florida, Maine, Ohio, Michigan, New Mexico and Wisconsin, incumbent Republicans carried the day. Democrat Gov Pat Quinn was defeated in Barack Obama's home state of Illinois, while solidly Democratic Maryland and Massachusetts both elected Republicans to open seats.
The sole bits of silver lining for Democrats come from Pennsylvania, where Tom Wolf defeated deeply unpopular incumbent Republican Tom Corbett, and Colorado, as incumbent Gov John Hickenlooper eked out a narrow win.
In Connecticut the Democratic incumbent holds a slight lead, while Republican Gov Sean Parnell in Alaska trails an independent candidate - but these races have yet to be decided.
"These results aren't about terrain or candidates," writes Talking Points Memo's Josh Marshall. "They're about the national political climate." And the climate, he says, is decidedly anti-Democrat.
In the days leading up to the election, Democrats attempted to minimise their potential losses by claiming that voters were angry at incumbents across the board, writes Vox's Matthew Yglesias. But given the governor results, he says, that just isn't the case.
"Right now, the country isn't happy with the Democratic Party or its leader," he says.
The Daily Beast's Ben Jacobs identifies the Maryland race as the biggest upset, calling Republican candidate Larry Hogan unimpressive. He says the Democrat, Lieutenant Governor Anthony Brown, was equally uninspiring, however.
"In a wave election for the GOP where Democrats weren't able to energise their base, that was enough."
The election results were an endorsement of state-level conservative policies, writes the National Review's Patrick Brennan. Wisconsin's Scott Walker and Rick Snyder in Michigan backed anti-union reforms. Rick Scott in Florida supported changes to education funding and food stamps, while Maine's Paul LePage cut welfare programmes.
"The fact that gubernatorial races are turning out as well as the Senate is nice news - they didn't get to run against President Obama, and a lot of them had policies to defend personally," he writes.
He also identifies Sam Brownback in Kansas as a surprise winner. The incumbent had endorsed such a rigorous tax-cutting policy that "he actually probably did some damage to the state's fiscal status", Brennan writes, "and he certainly angered a large number of his own party members".
With the 2014 mid-term elections now largely in the books, attention will turn quickly to the 2016 presidential contest, with the nominating primaries set to begin in a little over a year.
And again, while the much-talked about Senate races will be important in determining the agenda in Washington for the next two years, it's results at the state level where the impact will really be felt.
First and foremost, Mr Walker's win in Wisconsin likely vaults him to the top tier of Republican presidential contenders.
The Washington Examiner's Philip Klein says the governor's win ensures he will be seen as one of the few Republicans who can unite the party.
"His fight for limited government reforms in the face of a ferocious assault from national liberals endeared him to activists on the right," he writes. "At the same time, his ability to successfully govern and get re-elected in a blue state is comforting to establishment Republicans."
Although his re-election featured considerably less drama, John Kasich's 30-point win in Ohio means he is also well positioned for a presidential run.
"I think there's been no bigger winner this year in 2016 presidential politics on the Republican side than John Kasich," NBC political director Chuck Todd said Tuesday night. "I think the Republican Party nationally would like to nominate a governor."
New Jersey Gov Chris Christie also will likely see his presidential hopes boosted by the state-level success on Tuesday. As head of the Republican Governors Association, he vigorously campaigned across the US for his party's candidates.
"On the campaign trail, Christie has built relationships with Republican candidates - and their retinue of donors, local politicians and volunteers - which could come in handy in getting out the vote come 2016," write Matt Arco and Claude Brodesser-Akner for NJ.com.
There was also a big loser in yesterday's elections, Maryland Gov Martin O'Malley. Although like Mr Christie he wasn't on the ballot, his handpicked successor - Mr Brown - was. Mr O'Malley always has been considered a long-shot presidential aspirant, particularly if Hillary Clinton runs, but those odds just went from long to astronomical, as Mr Brown's defeat is being attributed in part to O'Malley-backed tax increases.
Beyond the individual presidential hopefuls, Republican control of the governor mansions in key swing states also likely provides a boost for whoever the party's nominee is come 2016.
Governors have built-in political apparatus that can help with presidential campaigns, and control over the levers of power can come in handy in tight contests. In 2000, for instance, Republican George W Bush benefited from Republican control of Florida during the state's post-election recount drama.
The path to the presidency leads through states like Florida, Wisconsin, Michigan, Iowa and Ohio. Tuesday showed that Republicans can govern and be re-elected in these states.
Although the demographics of the electoral becomes friendlier to Democrats with the higher turnout in presidential years, Republicans today can't help but look to 2016 with a renewed sense of optimism after Tuesday's results.
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Maybe it was inevitable. | Laura KuenssbergPolitical editor@bbclaurakon Twitter
One of the first moments that raised eyebrows in the course of the UK outbreak was when health minister Nadine Dorries came down with coronavirus.
Then, last week, we discovered that some key staff in Number 10, including the prime minister's chief Brexit negotiator David Frost, were self-isolating with suspected symptoms.
A fair number of MPs took themselves off into isolation for fear of having contracted the infection.
Their remaining colleagues were continually ordered to sit far apart on the green benches, before finally, this week, Parliament itself closed early, with no certain date for a return of normal business.
Still, the news that the prime minister himself has contracted coronavirus felt like a shock.
Within a couple of hours we discovered that Health Secretary Matt Hancock has the illness too.
Both of their symptoms are said to be mild. They have now joined much of the country in that most common of activities, WFH - working from home.
Questions are swirling, of course, about who else that is part of coordinating the fight against this disease may fall victim soon.
Chancellor Rishi Sunak is said to be well, and has not been tested, and nor has the prime minister's chief adviser Dominic Cummings.
There is no information that suggests the country's senior scientists, who are at the forefront of the effort to combat the virus, have taken ill.
Mr Johnson's team say that he is absolutely well enough to carry on in the job.
He is self-isolating in the 10 Downing Street flat, which links through to part of Number 11 too, and is carrying out his usual duties, including chairing Friday morning's coronavirus meeting, by video link.
But with the prime minister now a victim of the virus itself, this is anything but business as usual.
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President: Mauricio Macri | Buenos Aires Mayor Mauricio Macri defied expectations by winning the 2015 presidential election run-off, beating Peronist candidate Daniel Scioli to become the country's first unambiguously conservative president to win a free and fair election since 1916.
Born into a wealthy business family, Mr Macri worked for his father and in banking before going into politics - a step he partly attributes to his being kidnapped and held ransom by rogue police officers in 1991.
He entered Buenos Aires city politics in 2003, where his profile was helped by his presidency of Boca Juniors, one of the country's most popular and successful football clubs at the time.
He secured a place on the council in 2005 as part of the Republican Proposal alliance, and was elected mayor two years later.
He soon emerged as the leader of a reunited conservative opposition to Peronist presidents Nestor Kirchner and Cristina Fernandez, exploiting the failure of Ms Fernandez's administration to manage the consequences of the 2008 global economic crisis.
As president, Mr Macri has promised a clean break with almost all of his predecessor's state-focused policies, in particular pledging to lift currency exchange controls and improve conditions for business.
Capitalising on disillusion among poorer voters hit hard by the recession, he has also promised major infrastructure projects and a continuation of President Fernandez's popular welfare programmes.
He aims to reorient Argentina's South American regional policy away from populist governments like Venezuela towards the Pacific Alliance trading bloc that includes Chile, Peru, Colombia and Mexico, and aims for better relations with the United States and Britain.
Despite having built up a strong nationwide support base, Mr Macri still faces a broadly pro-Peronist majority in both houses of Congress - where elections are not due until 2017.
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China's economy is slowing down. | By Andrew WalkerBBC World Service economics correspondent
We know that. So, of course, does President Xi Jinping.
It is one of the major issues - shadows even - hanging over his visit to the United States.
After an average annual growth rate of 10% for three decades, that pace has cooled substantially. Last year it was 7.4%.
There are many economists who are profoundly sceptical about China's official data, who think the true figure is a good deal lower.
For next year the IMF forecasts 6.8%. And the slowdown was bound to happen.
'Excessive investment'
The IMF described the transition under way in China as "moving to a 'new normal', characterized by slower yet safer and more sustainable growth".
A new normal is needed because the forces behind China's previous dynamism are weakening. The ageing population means there's a limit to the contribution that a growing labour force can make to the economy.
All that previous strong growth means the technological gap compared with the rest of the world has narrowed. That in turn limits the scope for rapid gains from catching up.
Investment is another source of growth, which adds to the productive capacity of the economy. But China's investment level is already extremely high. Indeed IMF research suggested even in 2012 that it was excessive.
Why excessive? Because it diverts resources from other sectors of the economy including household spending, and if a country over invests an increasing number of projects are likely to be economically inefficient.
The question that has been worrying financial markets intermittently for the past few weeks has been - will the transition be a smooth one, or will China suffer what's called a hard landing, that's to say an abrupt slowdown or even a recession?
The answer really does matter for the rest of us.
Global recession?
China is by one measure the biggest economy on the planet. It accounts for 17% of global economic activity.
The US economy is almost as big but is not growing so rapidly. Things are likely to stay that way for years or even decades after China has settled to a more sustainable rate of growth.
That means that China's impact on global growth is larger, and so is the potential contribution it can make to increased demand for goods produced by other countries.
So hard or soft landing really is a big deal. Which can we expect?
Views among economists vary - when don't they? There is one very influential voice who has set out a pretty gloomy judgement, Willem Buiter, chief economist at the giant financial firm Citigroup, formerly of the Bank of England and the London School of Economics.
He says: "We believe that there is a high and rising likelihood of a Chinese, emerging market and global recession scenario playing out."
Now there's a debate to be had about what the word "recession" means, especially when applied to emerging economies and still more so for the global economy.
Mr Buiter's definition is based on an economy's potential to grow. He concludes that growth of less than 2% for at least a year is a global recession. The threshold for China is 2.5%.
He is one of the sceptics about China's data, so his view is that the Chinese economy is already closer to that than the official figures suggest.
For the world economy he reckons there's a 40% chance of a moderate recession, with a 15% chance of a more severe downturn and a financial crisis.
If it does happen, he says, it's most likely the world be dragged into a recession by slow growth in a number of key emerging economies, especially China: "We consider China to be at high and rapidly rising risk of a cyclical hard landing."
Why? Many of the classical warning signs are present, he says - excess capacity in an increasing number of industries, too much borrowing and debt, and episodes of "irrational exuberance" in asset markets, recently property and the stock market.
He says: "This is the classical recipe for a recession in capitalist market economies."
If it does happen then it would surely affect many others. And there are other emerging economies already in recession including two large ones in the shape of Brazil and Russia.
China is among the most important export destinations for many countries - number one for South Korea (more than a quarter of exports), Saudi Arabia and Iran.
For the largest economies, China comes in as the second biggest export market for Japan, fourth for the US, and for Germany it's second among markets outside the European Union.
Falling commodities
Even countries with little direct trade with China could easily feel the effects of a hard landing, if they are suppliers to countries that do sell directly to China, or if they export commodities whose price in international markets is affected by weakened Chinese demand.
Take two key industrial commodities, crude oil and copper.
The price of crude oil has fallen by more than half since June last year. There are supply factors behind that - shale oil in the US and the unwillingness of Saudi Arabia and others to curtail production as they might have done in the past.
But weaker-than-expected growth in demand from China is another element in the price fall.
Copper is a key raw material for the construction industry. It's used extensively in electrical installations, and China's building boom has been hungry for copper.
Its price is also down by half, in this case from 2011. China's slowdown is the key factor.
So that's the case for being gloomy.
But there are some who are more upbeat about the outlook. In a recent note to clients, the London consultancy Capital Economics wrote: "In contrast to the widespread doom and gloom about China's immediate economic outlook, we think growth has already stabilised after a slowdown at the start of the year, and that there are good reasons to expect stronger growth in the months ahead."
Ahead of his visit to the US, President Xi told the Wall Street Journal: "The Chinese economy is still operating within the proper range."
His host, President Barack Obama, must be hoping he is right and that it stays that way. He's not the only one.
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A chronology of key events:
| 15th-18th centuries - Montenegro retains substantial measure of autonomy from Ottoman Empire.
1798 - Montenegro acknowledged as independent principality.
1878 - Montenegrin independence recognised under international treaties.
1918 - Following first world war, Montenegro becomes part of Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.
1929 - Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes renamed Kingdom of Yugoslavia.
1945 - Together with Serbia, Slovenia, Macedonia, Croatia and Bosnia, Montenegro becomes one of republics in new Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia under Josip Broz Tito.
1980 - Tito dies.
1991 - Milo Djukanovic becomes Montenegrin prime minister.
Montenegro supports union with Serbia as Slovenia, Macedonia, Croatia and Bosnia break away.
1992 - Montenegro joins Serbia in Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
Rising nationalist and independence aspirations bring bloody conflict with Croats and Bosnian Muslims.
UN imposes sanctions on Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
1997 - Milo Djukanovic defeats pro-Milosevic candidate in Montenegrin presidential election.
1999 - Milo Djukanovic declares Montenegro not a party to the conflict over Kosovo as Serbian President Milosevic's actions there spark Nato air strikes.
Montenegro abandons dinar in favour of German mark.
2000 - Milosevic ousted by pro-Western reformers in Belgrade. Montenegrin leadership becomes increasingly independence-minded.
2002 January - Montenegro adopts euro as its currency.
Union with Serbia
2002 March - Yugoslav, Montenegrin and Serbian leaders sign EU mediated accord to set up new state, to be called Serbia and Montenegro, in place of Yugoslavia.
2002 April - Government collapses over differences on the new union of Serbia and Montenegro.
2002 October - Parties allied with pro-independence Milo Djukanovic win Montenegrin general elections. He gives up presidency to become coalition prime minister.
2003 January - Serbian and Montenegrin parliaments approve constitutional charter for Union of Serbia and Montengro.
2003 May - Filip Vujanovic elected president.
2004 May - Prominent journalist and critic of Montenegrin government, Dusko Jovanovic, is shot dead. His paper, Dan, is seen as a mouthpiece for the republic's anti-independence opposition, and had alleged corruption in the Montenegrin leadership.
2004 December - Montenegro applies for membership of the World Trade Organisation.
2005 February - Montenegrin leaders write to their Serbian counterparts suggesting an early end to the Union of Serbia and Montenegro and the formation of two independent republics. Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica rejects this.
Independence
2006 May - Montenegro holds an independence referendum. Just over the required 55% of voters say yes.
2006 June - Montenegro declares independence, Serbia responds by declaring itself the independent sovereign successor state to the Union of Serbia and Montenegro.
Montenegro becomes the 192nd member of the UN.
2006 August - Montenegro ends compulsory military service and says it will form a smaller, professional army.
2006 September - The governing coalition claims to have won an absolute majority in the first general election since independence.
2006 October-November - Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic steps down and is succeeded by his Democratic Party of Socialists ally, Zeljko Sturanovic.
2006 December - Nato admits Montenegro to its Partnership for Peace pre-membership programme.
2007 January - Montenegro admitted to IMF and World Bank.
Road to Europe
2007 March - Montenegro takes its first step towards European Union membership by initialling a stabilisation and association agreement.
2007 October - Montenegro adopts new constitution.
2008 February - Long-time leader Milo Djukanovic returns for a fifth term as prime minister after his party colleague, Zeljko Sturanovic, steps down on health grounds.
2008 March - Incumbent President Filip Vujanovic - an ally of Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic - wins re-election.
2008 November - Montenegro recognises Kosovo's self-declared independence, prompting protests from Serbia.
2008 December - Montenegro presents official application for EU membership.
2009 March - Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic's European Montenegro Coalition wins a landslide victory in parliamentary elections.
2009 December - Visa-free travel within EU's Schengen zone comes into effect for Montenegro's citizens.
En route to EU and Nato
2010 November - European Commission recommends that Montenegro be named as a formal candidate to join the European Union.
2010 December - Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic resigns, and is replaced by ally Igor Luksic.
2012 December - Milo Djukanovic becomes prime minister for the seventh time at head of coalition.
2013 January - The European Parliament says that Montenegro is on track to achieve EU membership, but calls on it to do more to protect media freedom, women's rights and gender equality.
2013 April - Filip Vujanovic wins a third term as president after narrowly winning an election.
2015-2016 - Opposition wave of protests against rule of Milo Djukanovic splits governing coalition, partly over corruption allegations and opposition to joining Nato.
2016 October - Government accuses Russian-backed forces of coup attempt on eve of parliamentary elections, and later indicts 14 people, including two Russian citizens.
2016 November - Dusko Markovic takes over as prime minister from his Democratic Party of Socialists colleague Milo Djukanovic after the party lost seats at the October election but remained in power due to an opposition boycott of parliament.
2017 June - Montenegro joins NATO, upsetting Russia, its traditional ally.
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Sara Winter has always had strong views. | By Katy WatsonBBC South America correspondent
As an activist, she used to chain herself to fences in protest at chauvinism and sexual violence. She was, by her own admission, one of the most high-profile feminists in Brazil.
Sara is certainly striking. She has peroxide blonde hair, tattoos and a snappy dress sense.
But the thing that stands out the most is the badge she is wearing on her top. It is a picture of a skull with a knife through it and two guns.
"It's my favourite police organisation, Bope," she says, proudly referring to the logo of Brazil's Special Police Operations Battalion.
"They climb into the favelas and kill the bad guys. They put their lives at risk all the time to save the population of Rio."
It is not the sort of comment you would expect from a liberal activist. But Sara has had a political about-turn in recent years.
'Second chance'
Six years after having an abortion, Sara became pregnant again. Between the two pregnancies, she had regained her faith in the Catholic Church and her views on pregnancy - and politics - changed radically.
"I was so happy because I felt that God was giving me a second chance to be a mum," she recalls.
"I decided to come back to the Church and I think I can help women much more with conservative politics than feminism.
"[I spent] five years being the most popular feminist in Brazil and I did nothing for women," she says. "I just spent this time talking about abortion and legalising drugs and communism and I called that empowering myself."
Sara's U-turn is unusual but it mirrors to some extent what is happening in Brazil.
For more than 15 years, Brazil was governed by the left. Former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva rose to power in 2003 promising change.
But with the country's most loved politician now facing 12 years in prison for corruption, and with his successor Dilma Rousseff impeached, people are disillusioned. The left did not deliver, so people want change.
'Brazilian Trump'
Sara's political idol is the far-right presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro.
Many refer to Mr Bolsonaro as the "Brazilian Trump", the two are very different men in very different countries but the similarities, or rather the set of circumstances that allow them to both exist, are uncanny.
Mr Bolsonaro brands himself as different from all the rest, a clean candidate amid a sea of corrupt politicians that has been the talk of Brazil for the past few years.
He has been accused of being homophobic and told a congresswoman she was not worth raping. He has ranted against minorities and has called for looser gun laws.
Jair Bolsonaro does not hold back.
But Sara will not have a bad word said against him. "I know it sounds really awkward, but really, if any woman could see Bolsonaro's policies, she would be in love, like me!"
She gushingly talks about one of his proposals - chemically castrating rapists.
"We have so many feminist congresswomen, why didn't they suggest this before?" she asks. "Bolsonaro did it."
Growing right
While many people wince at Jair Bolsonaro's politics, he remains a popular figure.
He is currently second in the presidential polls after former President Lula, who may not even be able to run now because of his corruption conviction.
While Mr Bolsonaro is at the extreme end of the right, conservative politics more generally are enjoying a comeback in Brazil - this in a country that until 1985 was ruled by a military dictatorship.
Right-wing pressure groups like the Free Brazil Movement, or MBL in Portuguese, are finding big audiences.
The MBL started its life on the streets, calling for then President Dilma Rousseff to be impeached.
It has since strengthened by going online. It has more than 2.5 million followers on Facebook who avidly watch their political videos criticising Brazil's left-wing politicians.
The MBL calls itself libertarian. It wants a freer country with a smaller state, its way. But its politics are hard to define because most members also hold conservative views on abortion and gun ownership.
"The problem is that some parts of Brazilian mentality, especially the left-wing mentality, say that the Conservatives are always totalitarians, always on the wrong side of things," says Pedro Ferreira, an MBL co-founder.
"Whenever they try to voice what they feel they are called fascists or Nazis." He says the internet has changed things. It has allowed people to find their own voice, to find their values.
"That is why we have Trump, that is why we have Brexit, that is why we have MBL. We have the common people's voice being heard," he says.
"That is scaring a lot of people but that is very democratic."
Experts say Brazil's corruption scandals have been fertile ground for this kind of politics.
"You have a total mistrust of every kind of authority in Brazil, so for these movements that propagate hell, that show that everything is wrong, this kind of scenario is very useful," says Prof Rafael Alcadipani.
"They pick up very small things in reality and try to magnify them as if these were the biggest problems in Brazil."
Prof Alcadipani accuses movements like the MBL of propagating fake news. But it is an accusation the right makes against the left, too.
A wider vision of the right?
While the MBL essentially remains a movement, some of its members have entered politics on other parties' tickets.
Twenty-one-year-old Fernando Holiday may be one of the MBL's leading figures but he ran for and won a seat as city councillor in São Paulo for the Democrats party.
An unusual poster boy for conservatism, he comes from a poor family and is gay.
He thinks young Brazilians had, until recently, become disengaged with politics.
"The right became synonymous with more conservative politics, irrelevant for minorities," he says.
"It also became associated with authoritarian, even nostalgic feelings about the dictatorship, like Bolsonaro."
"But I think we bring a wider vision of what the right is," he explains. "Not everything fits into a standard box and is determined by rigid rules."
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Chief executive: CY Leung
| Pro-Beijing politician Leung Chun-ying's tenure has been marked by recurring political battles with Hong Kong's pro-democracy opposition.
The chief executive, usually known as CY Leung, succeeded Donald Tsang - who had served the maximum two terms allowed - in 2012 to become Hong Kong's third chief executive through an unusually bitter electoral contest with another pro-China candidate, Mr Tsang's former deputy Henry Tang.
Mr Tang won an unprecedented 24% of the votes in the electoral college, despite reports of strong Chinese pressure on his supporters to back Mr Leung.
As a result, Mr Leung had a comparatively weak mandate, and took office amid major public protests over the lack of democracy and growing inequality.
Mr Leung's government said it made strides in fulfilling his pledges to combat poverty and rein in Hong Kong's high housing costs.
Tensions
A plan to introduce pro-China "patriotic lessons" in schools led protests and then an embarrassing climb-down on the eve of legislative elections in September 2012, at which pro-democracy parties retained enough seats to veto constitutional change.
The stand-off with pro-democracy forces reached new heights in 2014, when Mr Leung indicated his support for China's view that only candidates chosen by a nominating committee should stand in the direct universal elections for the post of chief executive in 2017.
Activists responded with an unofficial pro-democracy referendum in which almost 800,000 residents took part, and pro-democracy protesters occupied large parts of central Hong Kong. In June 2015 the Legislative Council rejected the election proposal.
After a lucrative career in property development, involving acting as advisor to several provinces in China, Mr Leung entered politics in the pro-China camp, rising to membership of Hong Kong's ruling Executive Council and China's People's Political Consultative Conference parliamentary body.
Chief Executive-elect; Carrie Lam
Ms Lam was deputy to Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying in 2012-2017, building up a reputation for administrative competence and pragmatism when compared with her gaffe-prone boss.
Nonetheless, she remains unpopular with democracy campaigners, especially after publicly defending China's 2014 proposal to have the chief executive elected from a list of Beijing-approved candidates.
The ensuing mass protests led to the territory's Legislative Council rejecting the proposal.
Ms Lam worked in the civil service under the British administration and stayed on after the transfer to China, taking senior positions in the social welfare, housing and home affairs departments before joing Mr Leung's government as chief secretary.
She saw off a challenge by the more popular Financial Secretary John Tsang to receive China's support in the chief executive election, winning with nearly 67% of the vote in the pro-Beijing Electoral College.
Ms Lam has pledged to bring younger people into government and cut housing costs, but remains non-committal on the question of greater democracy. She takes office on 1 July.
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The chancellor turned 40 today. | Laura KuenssbergPolitical editor@bbclaurakon Twitter
The tiny number of staff at work in Number 11 did make an effort at celebration in these grim times with, apparently, a few balloons in the office.
There is, though, not much time in government for anything other than trying to get through this emergency - nor anything to celebrate.
The impact on the economy has already been so extreme that Rishi Sunak confirmed today that the taxpayer will carry on paying 80% of the wages of more than seven million people until the end of July and then sharing the cost of that with employers, extending the furlough scheme until the end of October.
The idea is the Treasury picks up swathes of the country's wage bill so that businesses can close their doors but can keep their staff on standby.
The plan has, ministers firmly believe, staved off a much, much more serious economic disaster where we'd be heading into a period of mass unemployment.
By carrying on for a few more months, the hope is to keep the brakes on, to stop a slide into profound and prolonged downturn.
There are fears about the extension, however: not least how much businesses will be asked to share the bill from August.
What happens to businesses who still haven't reopened by then and still have no income, so can't split the bill?
What about businesses who decide not to reopen?
There are also fears among some ministers about how extending the scheme for every part of the economy reduces the incentive for people to go back to work and businesses to reopen too.
But, in the months to come, the question for the government is likely to extend far beyond the dilemmas over furlough.
More broadly, they may have to consider which sectors of the economy do they ask the taxpayer to help preserve, and which do they let go?
In this emergency phase, we are living with an astonishing level of state support being lent to keep big swathes of the economy afloat.
This chancellor and this Tory government are prepared to wear massive levels of borrowing for the foreseeable future. There will, in time, be a limit and an end point to how much more to add.
But many industries' models may not work for a long time; the sums may simply not add up.
Rishi Sunak may therefore have to decide whether it's the right thing to keep propping up business and industries whose future after corona may not be viable.
That's not just a decision about what we need, and how we want to earn our living as a country in the future, but a series of political choices about what the economy ought to look like in the years to come.
When ministers make decisions about the best use of taxpayers' money - awful though it may be to consider - the changes that Covid-19 has forced on our way of life may mean that some previously successful businesses may simply not be able to make the sums work for a very long time on the other side.
Not that long ago, the chancellor and others talked brightly of a swift bounce back to the economy.
It is, of course, possible that may yet happen. There is, and will continue to be, vigorous economic debate about exactly what the numbers display.
But politically a mood is sinking in now, that very hard decisions about the shape of the country's income will have to be made.
When we asked him today about whether we're facing recession, the chancellor was reluctant to use the "r" word - recession - but accepted there were signs it was already happening.
He says his own "heart breaks" as people are already losing their jobs.
But it may not be long before he and the prime minister have no choice but to acknowledge the economic reality more explicitly - the sting in the virus' poisonous tail may be hardship for massive numbers of people in the country and harder decisions for Number 11 too.
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A chronology of key events:
| 711 - Gibraltar captured by Muslim commander Tariq Ibn-Ziyad.
1462 - Spain recovers Gibraltar from the Moors.
1501 - Isabella I, queen of Castile and Aragon, annexes Gibraltar to Spain.
1704 - The English capture Gibraltar during War of Spanish Succession.
1713 - Spain cedes Gibraltar to Britain under the Treaty of Utrecht.
1830 - Britain designates Gibraltar a British crown colony.
1940 - Civilian population temporarily evacuated to make Gibraltar a military fortress during the Second World War. Discontent at the slow pace of repatriation after the war becomes one of the sources of demands for self-government.
1950 - First Legislative Council convened.
1963 - Spanish government begins a campaign through the United Nations Special Committee on Decolonisation for the handover of Gibraltar to Spain.
1967 - Referendum: Residents vote resoundingly in favour of continued British sovereignty.
1969 - Britain introduces full internal self-government under a new constitution, with an elected House of Assembly. Spain closes its border with Gibraltar, withdraws its labour force and cuts transport and communication links in protest.
1973 - Gibraltar joins the European Economic Community alongside Britain.
1980 - Lisbon agreement between the British and Spanish government initiates the gradual re-establishment of talks over Gibraltar.
1981 - Gibraltarians granted full British citizenship after a campaign against the British Nationality Act, which had proposed removing their right of entry to Britain.
1982 - Spain opens the border to pedestrians under limited conditions.
1984 - Under the terms of the Brussels Process, Britain and Spain agree to provide equal rights for Spaniards in Gibraltar and for Gibraltarians in Spain. Free border crossing between Spain and Gibraltar is restored.
'No' to shared sovereignty
2002 - Referendum reaffirms almost total Gibraltarian opposition to British government proposals for joint British-Spanish sovereignty. Britain reaffirms that no decision on the future of Gibraltar will be made without the consent of Gibraltarians.
2004 August - Gibraltar marks the 300th anniversary of the establishment of British rule. Spain criticises visit by Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon as "insensitive".
2006 September - Ministers from Britain, Spain and Gibraltar sign a landmark agreement under which border controls are further eased. Spain agrees to allows flights to Gibraltar's airport. The deal makes no mention of sovereignty.
2006 November - Voters in a referendum back a new constitution. This confirms Gibraltarian home rule, and renames the House of Assembly the Parliament of Gibraltar.
2006 December - Passenger flights between Gibraltar and Spain recommence after a Spanish ban of many decades.
2009 July - Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos visits Gibraltar for talks with the local government and his British counterpart David Miliband, this being the first visit by a Spanish minister since Britain captured the Rock.
2010 July - Gibraltar announces it is ending tax-free offshore status for locally-registered companies operating outside Gibraltar from January 2011.
2011 December - Gibraltar Socialist Labour Party and their Liberal partners win elections, ending a 15-year run in office of the Gibraltar Social Democrats, led by Peter Caruana. Socialist Labour leader Fabian Picardo becomes chief minister.
2013 July-November - Tension with Spain flares up again after Gibraltar begins the construction of an artificial reef in the waters off the Rock. Spain introduces stricter border checks at the crossing. The European Commission says there was no evidence the checks were illegal.
2014 January - Declassified documents show former King Juan Carlos of Spain told Britain in 1982 that it was not in his country's "interest to recover Gibraltar in the near future" as it would trigger Moroccan claims to the Spanish territories of Ceuta and Melilla.
2014 April - British foreign office says Spanish vessels made more than 500 unauthorised incursions into Gibraltar waters in 2013.
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We humans do love to acquire stuff. | By Richard AndersonBusiness reporter, BBC News
Cars, shoes, pizza scissors, vibrating forks and bluetooth water bottles. The list of consumer products - some pointless, some not - that we amass over our lifetimes is almost endless.
The problem is rising populations and rising aspirations mean that the earth's finite natural resources are feeling the strain.
One possible answer is simply to own fewer things. In other words, sharing, renting and swapping stuff, rather than buying it.
Access not ownership
It's a concept that has exploded in recent years.
The variety of businesses set up within the sharing economy is staggering, from cars (for example Lyft, Blablacar, RelayRides, Liftshare and Getaround) and fashion (Girlmeetsdress, Fashionhire) to meals (Grubclub, Mealsharing, Tablecrowd and Vizeats) and wi-fi (Fon).
Anything goes at sites such as Rentmyitems and Yerdle (stuff), Storenextdoor (storage), Spinlister (bikes), DogVacay (pet boarding) and Campinmygarden.
And while this model would not be possible without the advent of the internet, it's the changing attitude of the younger generation that is key to this fundamental transformation.
Comfortable with sharing photos, personal information and recommendations on social media, so-called millennials are keen to embrace this new economic paradigm, where access is more important than ownership.
"We are now in the early stages of a different model of organising economic activity," says Prof Arun Sundararajan at New York University.
Indeed he argues the sharing economy taps into a basic human need.
"We are wired for social connection. The appeal [of sharing] is to integrate some semblance of human interaction into our economic activities."
Why buy?
However, the primary driver behind the extraordinary growth of the sharing economy is somewhat more prosaic, according to expert Benita Matofska - money.
Making or saving money is what drives most people to share or rent, while the social and environmental aspects keep them coming back for more, she says.
The benefits to the consumer are clear - you only pay for what you need, when you need it.
Why buy a car when, on average, you only use it for 4% of its life? Why buy an expensive designer dress to wear once a year when you can rent one, and rent a different one next time round, for a fraction of the cost?
Sharing is even changing the way we think about work, says Ms Matofska, with more and more people taking on one-off projects as opposed to traditional jobs thanks to shared work spaces and sites such as Upwork, Freelancer, Guru and Taskrabbit.
But the two start-ups that stand out from the crowd are taxi service Uber, now valued at more than $60bn (£42bn), and room sharing site Airbnb, valued at $25bn.
As a recent report on the sharing economy by US Crowd Companies says, "the world's largest hospitality brand owns not a single room or hotel. The world's largest car service owns not a single vehicle".
Indeed in eight years, Airbnb now has more rooms than the Hilton Group managed in almost 100.
'Experiment aggressively'
And it's this kind of dizzying success that has grabbed the attention of the established order.
Understandably concerned that they may go the way of the music industry, where many traditional incumbents were wiped out by the advent of streaming, big global brands are desperately trying to work out how best to engage with this new economic model.
Prof Sundararajan's advice is simple: "They have to experiment aggressively with new consumption models".
And many are. Unsurprisingly given the impact of Uber and Lyft, carmakers have also been among the first to react.
Ford is offering financial incentives to customers who rent out their cars using sharing site Getaround, while Daimler runs its own service called Car2Go.
Rival BMW has also been quick to react with its DriveNow service based in a number of German cities, London, Copenhagen and Stockholm.
"There is physically not enough space for the one-car, one-owner business to grow; this is about selling one car a thousand times," explains Tony Douglas, head of mobility services at the German giant.
"Hope and threat are both drivers - it's about generating new business, [and] if we don't do it, someone else will.
"Why be a supplier for Uber or Zipcar and let them own the customer? We want to own the customer."
BMW started looking at the on-demand model four or five years ago, with a small project team of five people. It now has a dedicated and profitable business unit employing more than 100 people.
Other companies are engaging in a different, if rather less imaginative, way - by investing in or buying out sharing start-ups.
US giant General Motors recently announced a $500m partnership with Lyft, having already teamed up with RelayRides; while Hyatt Hotels has invested in Onefinestay, an upmarket room-sharing site.
Retailing, tourism, healthcare, energy supply and recruitment are likely to be the early adopters, but it's not just the private sector that is waking up to this fundamental shift in the way we buy and sell goods and services.
Local councils and charities are also looking to embrace sharing, for example Macmillan's Team Up initiative, where local people can help those suffering with cancer.
'Rebound effect'
While the advent of sharing lifestyles should in the main help relieve pressure on resources, there could, however, be some unexpected knock-on effects.
For example, cheaper and more accessible taxi services could well provide an increasingly attractive alternative to public transport, exacerbating rather than reducing emissions of CO2 and pollutants.
Indeed there is increasing talk of a "rebound effect, where people who share have more money to spend on things, which muddies the water a little," says David Symons, director of consultancy WSP Parsons Brinckerhoff.
But given that those who embrace sharing are by their very nature less obsessed with accumulating material possessions than previous generations, sharing must be seen as a force for good.
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A chronology of key events:
| 1st-8th centuries - Turkic-speaking and Mongol tribes invade and settle in what is now Kazakhstan and Central Asia.
8th century - Arab invaders introduce Islam.
1219-24 - Mongol tribes led by Genghis Khan invade Kazakhstan and Central Asia. Later they become assimilated by Turkic tribes that make up the majority in their empire.
Late 15th century - With the formation of the Kazakh khanate, the Kazakhs emerge as a distinct ethnic group.
Early 17th century - Kazakhs split into three tribal unions, the Elder, Middle and Lesser Zhuzes, or Hordes, which were led by Khans.
Russian domination
1731-42 - The Khans of the three Zhuzes formally join Russia in pursuit of protection from invasions from the east by the Mongols.
1822-68 - Despite many uprisings, Tsarist Russia retains control over the Kazakh tribes, deposing the Khans.
1868-1916 - Thousands of Russian and Ukrainian peasants are brought in to settle Kazakh lands; first industrial enterprises set up.
1916 - A major anti-Russian rebellion is repressed, with about 150,000 people killed and more than 300,000 fleeing abroad.
1917 - Civil war breaks out following the Bolshevik revolution in Russia.
Soviet rule
1920 - Kazakhstan becomes an autonomous republic of the USSR. Until 1925 it is called the Kyrgyz Autonomous Province to distinguish its people from the Cossacks.
Late 1920s-1930s - Intensive industrialisation and collectivisation of agriculture. More than 1 million people die from starvation as a result of the campaign to settle nomadic Kazakhs and collectivise agriculture.
1936 - Kazakhstan becomes a full union republic of the USSR.
1940s - Hundreds of thousands of Koreans, Crimean Tatars, Germans and others forcibly moved to Kazakhstan.
1949 - The first nuclear test explosion is carried out at the Semipalatinsk nuclear test ground in eastern Kazakhstan.
1954-62 - About two million people, mainly Russians, move to Kazakhstan during the campaign to develop virgin lands launched by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev; the proportion of ethnic Kazakhs in the republic drops to 30%.
1961 - The first manned spacecraft launched from the Baikonur space launch site in central Kazakhstan.
Anti-Soviet stirrings
1986 - About 3,000 people take part in protests in Almaty after Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev appoints Gennadiy Kolbin, an ethnic Russian, head of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan (CPK), replacing Dinmukhamed Kunayev, an ethnic Kazakh.
1989 - Nursultan Nazarbayev, an ethnic Kazakh, becomes head of the CPK; parliament adopts a new law on language, proclaiming Kazakh the state language and Russian a language of inter-ethnic communication.
1990 - The Supreme Soviet elects Nursultan Nazarbayev first Kazakh president and on 25 October declares state sovereignty.
1991 August - President Nazarbayev condemns the attempted anti-Gorbachev coup in Moscow; the CPK withdraws from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union; Nazarbayev signs a decree on closing the Semipalatinsk nuclear test ground.
Independence
1991 December - Nursultan Nazarbayev wins uncontested presidential elections; Kazakhstan declares independence from the Soviet Union and joins the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).
1992 - Kazakhstan admitted into the United Nations and the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, the predecessor of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
1993 - A new constitution increasing presidential powers is adopted; a major privatisation programme is launched; Kazakhstan ratifies the first Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty and the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
1995 - Kazakhstan signs economic and military cooperation pact with Russia; nuclear-free status is obtained; President Nazarbayev's term in office is extended until December 2000 and a new constitution adopted by national referendum.
1997 - Major oil agreements secured with China. The Kazakh capital is moved from Almaty in the south to Akmola (formerly Tselinograd) in the north.
1998 - New capital is renamed Astana. Constitution amended, extending president's term in office from five to seven years and removing upper age limit for president.
1999 - Nursultan Nazarbayev re-elected president after main rival, former PM Akezhan Kazhegeldin, barred from standing. Subsequent parliamentary elections criticised by OSCE for irregularities.
Separatist plot by ethnic Russians in north east Kazakhstan fails.
2000 - Economic Security Strategy up to 2010 is adopted. World Bank praises economic reforms. Kazakhstan beefs up security on all borders following incursions by Islamist militants in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan; clampdown on Uighurs after shoot-out in Almaty.
2001 - First major pipeline for transporting oil from Caspian to world markets opens in March, running from huge Tengiz oil field in western Kazakhstan to Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiysk.
2001 June - Kazakhstan joins China, Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan in launching the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) which aims to fighting ethnic and religious militancy and to promote trade.
2001 November - President Nazarbayev purges government of officials accused of joining newly-formed Democratic Choice reform movement.
2001 December - President Nazarbayev, US President George W Bush meet, declare commitment to long-term, strategic partnership.
2002 January - President Nazarbayev appoints Imangali Tasmagambetov as prime minister to replace Kasymzhomart Tokayev, who quit abruptly.
2002 July - Democratic Choice co-founder and ex-energy minister Mukhtar Ablyazov jailed for alleged abuse of office.
2002 August - Opposition figure Galymzhan Zhakiyanov, co-founder of Democratic Choice movement and critic of President Nazarbayev, is jailed for alleged abuse of office as regional governor.
2003 January - Journalist and Nazarbayev critic Sergey Duvanov found guilty of raping minor and jailed. Rights groups say trial was flawed and an attempt to silence media criticism of president. He is later released on probation after serving a year of his three and a half year sentence.
2003 May - Jailed opposition leader Mukhtar Ablyazov pardoned and released.
2003 June - Prime Minister Tasmagambetov resigns over proposed land reform bill. Daniyal Akhmetov replaces him. Bill, allowing private ownership of land, is passed.
2003 December - President Nazarbayev announces moratorium on death penalty
Oil to China
2004 May - Deal signed with China on construction of oil pipeline to Chinese border.
2004 September/October - President Nazarbayev retains control over lower house of parliament as his Otan party wins majority of seats in elections which international observers criticise as flawed.
Parliament speaker Zharmakhan Tuyakbay resigns in protest at conduct of voting.
2005 January - Court orders dissolution of Democratic Choice, one of the country's main opposition parties. The party is accused of breaching state security by calling on supporters to protest against parliamentary election results.
2005 March - Opposition groups join together to form For A Just Kazakhstan movement led by Zharmakhan Tuyakbay.
2005 November - Opposition figure Zamanbek Nurkadilov, a vocal critic of President Nazarbayev, found shot dead at his home.
2004 August - Jailed opposition figure Galymzhan Zhakiyanov released from prison two years into seven-year sentence and sent into internal exile.
2005 December - Nursultan Nazarbayev returned for further term as president with more than 90% of vote. Western observers say poll flawed.
President Nazarbayev inaugurates a 1,000-km (620 mile) pipeline to carry oil to western China.
2006 January - Opposition leader Galymzhan Zhakiyanov returns home to Almaty from internal exile after being released on parole.
2006 February - Opposition figure Altynbek Sarsenbaiuly, his bodyguard and driver are found shot dead outside Almaty.
2007 January - Prime Minister Daniyal Akhmetov resigns, giving no reason for his move. He is replaced by former deputy premier Karim Masimov.
2007 May - Parliament votes to allow President Nazarbayev to stay in office for an unlimited number of terms.
Mr Nazarbayev fires son-in-law Rakhat Aliyev in an apparent power struggle.
2007 August - Trial of 30 alleged Islamists accused of belonging to the banned group Hizb ut-Tahrir, which advocates the setting up of an Islamic state across Central Asia.
2007 August - Elections hand President Nazarbayev's Nur-Otan party all seats in the lower house of parliament. Observers say the conduct of the vote improved since the last election, but still did not meet international standards of fairness.
2008 March - President Nazarbayev's exiled former son-in-law, Rakhat Aliyev, is sentenced to 20 years imprisonment in absentia after being found guilty of plotting a coup. Aliyev denies the charges, saying they are politically motivated.
2009 April - President Nazarbayev announces his readiness to build a nuclear fuel bank to ensure other countries do not need to develop their own fuel. Idea first proposed by the International Atomic Energy Agency in 2005, and supported by both the United States and Russia.
2009 June - A law tightens control over the internet by ruling that chat rooms, blogs and public forums count as mass media. This means a blogger could break the law by expressing a view.
2009 October - A court rejects an appeal by prominent human rights activist Yevgeny Zhovtis against a manslaughter conviction stemming from a car accident. Mr Zhovtis and rights groups said he had not been given a fair trial.
France and Kazakhstan sign energy and business deals worth $6bn during a visit by President Nicolas Sarkozy. Kazakhstan also agreed to allow French military supplies to pass through on their way to Afghanistan.
2009 December - Chinese President Hu Jintao and President Nazarbayev unveil the Kazakh section of a natural gas pipeline joining Central Asia to China.
2010 January - Kazakhstan becomes the first former Soviet state to chair the Organisation of Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) security and rights group, despite criticism of its own democratic credentials. President Nazarbayev signals a change in emphasis from rights to security.
2010 February - A court overturns an earlier ruling that banned the media from publishing criticism of President Nazarbayev's son-in-law Timur Kulibayev. The OSCE had criticised the ban.
More powers for president
2010 May - Parliament approves a bill granting more powers to President Nazarbayev, granting him the title of "leader of the nation" and immunity from prosecution.
2010 July - A customs union between Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan comes into force after Belarus ratifies a key customs code.
2011 February - President Nazarbayev calls early presidential election, after a planned referendum on allowing him to stay on unopposed until 2020 is ruled unconstitutional.
2011 April - President Nazarbayev wins re-election in a poll boycotted by the opposition.
2011 December - Clashes between striking workers and police in western oil town of Zhanaozen leave 16 people dead. The government declares a state of emergency.
2012 January - Parliamentary elections, which international monitors say fail to meet basic democratic principles.
2012 October - Vladimir Kozlov, leader of an unofficial Alga opposition party, is jailed for seven and a half years after being found guilty of "attempting to overthrow the government" in an alleged plot with exiled politician and businessman Mukhtar Ablyazov. The authorities accuse Mr Kozlov of inciting violence during the Zhanaozen protests in December. Mr Kozlov says the sentence is politically motivated.
2013 June - David Cameron becomes the first serving British Prime Minister to pay an official visit to Kazakhstan. The UK is the third largest investor in the oil-rich central Asian nation.
2013 July - Amnesty International accuses President Nazarbeyev of making false promises to the international community about eradicating torture, and says the Kazakh security services carry out torture with impunity.
2014 January - A French court approves the extradition of Kazakh tycoon and dissident Mukhtar Ablyazov, accused of massive fraud, to Russia or Ukraine. Ablyazov is accused of stealing billions of dollars from the Kazakh BTA Bank, which also operates in Russia and Ukraine. He denies the charges and says he will appeal.
2014 May - Russia, Kazahkstan and Belarus sign an agreement creating an economic union. The Eurasian Economic Union aims to create a shared market and integrate economic policy across the three former Soviet countries.
2015 January - Eurasian Economic Union between Russia, Kazahkstan and Belarus comes into force.
2015 February - Kazakhstan's former ambassador to Austria, Rakhat Aliyev, is found dead in a prison cell in Vienna.
2015 April - President Nazarbayev is re-elected with 97.7 per cent of votes cast. Opposition parties did not field any candidates and the two other contenders were widely seen as pro-government.
2015 May - Authorities say about one-third of the endangered saiga antelope population - as many as 85,000 animals - has mysteriously died over the space of a several days possibly by a bacterial infection.
2015 August - Kazakhstan's currency, the Tenge, plunges in value by more than a third in one day precipitated by the government floating the currency after spending 28 billion US dollars propping it up.
An agreement is signed to create the world's first bank of low-enriched uranium in the northeast of Kazakhstan. The bank will be managed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
2015 September - President Nazarbayev appoints his daughter, Dariga, as deputy prime minister in a move linked to possible succession planning.
2015 December - Former Prime Minister Serik Akhmetov is sentenced to 10 years in prison for corruption including abuse of office and embezzlement of state funds.
2016 March - The government bans the use of mobile devices in government buildings - including smartphones, tablets and smart watches following cases of confidential information being leaked through the mobile messenger WhatsApp.
2016 April - Kazakhstan enacts a law allowing for the use of chemical castration on convicted paedophiles, after authorities report a 50 per cent on 2015.
2016 May - Police arrest dozens of anti-government protesters after they hold rallies against controversial land reforms.
2016 August - Vladimir Kozlov, the leader of an unofficial opposition party, is released four years into a seven and half-year prison sentence on charges of attempting to overthrow the government.
2016 December - France blocks the extradition to Russia of Kazakh banker, former energy minister and opposition figure Mukhtar Ablyazov, who is accused of embezzling up to six billion dollars.
Nazarbayev era ends
2017 March - Parliament approves constitutional reforms that will reduce the president's powers in favour of lawmakers and the cabinet.
2018 May - Parliament appoints President Nazarbayev chairman for life of a newly-strengthened Security Council, preparing the stage for his post-presidential role.
2019 March - President Nazarbayev announces his resignation.
2019 April - President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, the former Senate chairman, announces snap presidential elections for 9 June.
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Well, well, well. | Nick RobinsonPolitical editor
So much for those predictions of a flood of immigrants coming from Romania and Bulgaria once the door to the UK was opened - ie after visa restrictions were removed on 1 January this year.
The first set of data since immigration controls were lifted on the newest countries to join the EU - the official Labour Force Survey - show that there were 140,000 people born in those two countries in the British workforce in the first three months of this year. That's 4,000 lower than in the final three months of 2013 when visas were still required.
Those who've talked of tens of thousands let alone millions coming here will point to the fact that the numbers are up on a year ago - the figure for the first three months of 2013 was 112,000.
Those with no axe to grind will point out that these figures are of course only the first and a partial measure of what's been going on. There may be many people working in the 'grey economy' and who are not registered. We will know more when we see the figures for the whole of this year.
In just over a week's time - on election day as it happens - we will get data on the number of National Insurance numbers issued to overseas nationals.
In addition, it's worth noting that there has been a continuing large influx from Eurozone crisis countries eg Spain/Greece and other parts of Eastern Europe.
Despite the prime minister's confident assertions yesterday the Conservatives know that they are very unlikely to meet their election promise to cut net migration to tens of thousands. Unhelpfully for them we will also get the net migration figures on 22 May - election day - showing how far off course they are.
However, today the questions will be for UKIP who warned of a flood of new immigrants from the two countries.
CORRECTION: In the fourth paragraph I had said "Those who've talked of tens of thousands let alone millions coming here will point to the fact that the numbers are up on a year ago - the figure for the first three months of 2012 was 112,000." I should have said 2013 and it has been updated.
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Here We Go Again. | By Steven McIntoshEntertainment reporter
The first trailer for the highly-anticipated sequel to 2008's Mamma Mia dropped on Thursday.
Earlier versions of it may have leaked online in the last few days but we don't talk about those so hush now.
When it was released, the first Mamma Mia movie briefly held the title as the highest-grossing film release in UK film history.
(Of course, that was before the release of Skyfall, Spectre and Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Basically, Mamma Mia is now in ninth place.)
We've been through all two minutes and 24 seconds of the Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again trailer - several times, to be honest - and would like to raise the following issues.
1. Where in the name of Chiquitita is Meryl Streep
So there we were, clicking on the trailer on a perfectly pleasant Thursday morning, expecting unfiltered, light, fluffy, Abba-drenched escapism.
But no: the Mamma Mia 2 producers have decided to obliterate any false sense of security we'd all been foolishly lulled into in the promo's opening seconds.
As flashback images of Meryl Streep run across the screen, Julie Walters tells Amanda Seyfried: "Your mother was the bravest person we ever met."
Hold the phone. Did Mamma Mia just kill off Meryl Streep? SHE WASN'T EVEN THAT OLD.
Perhaps the actress has been too busy over the last couple of years winning awards to make room in her schedule for a mimed rendition of Voulez-Vous.
But still, if Donna Sheridan is dead in Mamma Mia 2, we are already done with 2018.
2. Haven't we seen Jeremy Irvine do something like this before?
In 2013's The Railway Man, Jeremy Irvine played a young Colin Firth.
He looked like a young Colin Firth, he sounded like a young Colin Firth, he WAS a young Colin Firth - as Louis Walsh might have said.
So now that he's climbed aboard Mamma Mia 2, and Colin Firth is also in Mamma Mia 2, surely he'll be reprising his role as a younger version of the Oscar-winning actor?
Not quite. He's playing a young Pierce Brosnan instead, which - if we didn't already know from having just looked it up on IMDB - we certainly know now from his hairstyle in the trailer.
3. Oh my god. It's Cher.
With blonde hair and sunglasses.
And apparently she's playing Meryl Streep's mum, as Amanda refers to her as "Grandma".
In real life Cher is only three years older than Meryl Streep so that pregnancy must have been quite the medical breakthrough.
"Grandma, you weren't invited," smiles Amanda in the trailer - the kind of smile that also says "oh my god look it's Cher I can't belieeeeeve it."
"That's the best kind of party little girl," Cher replies. Well put.
4. And look there's Will from W1A.
He's back in all his swooshy-haired glory, and this time he isn't just carrying Hugh Bonneville's fold-up bicycle.
Yeah, no yeah, no cool, yeah no worries.
5. The songs. THE SONGS.
For so long, we've all been kept awake, night after night, wondering which Abba classics will make it into the movie sequel.
We are now three songs closer to having the answer - as the trailer features I Have A Dream, Dancing Queen and Mamma Mia.
Earlier this year, Benny Andersson from Actual Abba told BBC Radio 2 that the film would also feature Angel Eyes, I Wonder and When I Kissed The Teacher.
But given how many of the big songs were mopped up by the first film, they don't have many other tunes left to play with.
The major omissions from the first included Fernando and Knowing Me, Knowing You. Beyond that, there may have to be some more repeats.
Which is fine by us, as long as one of them is Waterloo - because that one was cruelly relegated to the credits in the first film.
6. There's a new girlband in town.
Amanda Seyfried now appears to be performing with her mum's pals, played by Christine Baranski and Julie Walters, in the new film.
It works both as a touching tribute to Streep, and also as a vision of what the Sugababes might have looked like after another few decades of line-up changes.
Anyway, whatever other surprises are in Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again, we are so ready for this film.
For now, we say Thank You For The Trailer, which you can watch below.
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President: Rosen Plevneliev
| Rosen Plevneliev won the presidential elections in a run-off in October 2011, beating Socialist candidate Ivaylo Kalfin.
He took office in January 2012 for a five-year term in a post that carries few real powers.
As the candidate of the then-ruling centre-right GERB party, Mr Plevneliev's victory was expected to bolster the government's push for painful economic reforms.
When the government of Boyko Borisov collapsed in February 2013 following mass protests over high electricity prices, Mr Plevneliev appointed a caretaker government before fresh elections in May resulted in the formation of a technocratic government headed by Plamen Oresharski.
Before becoming president, Mr Plevneliev was construction minister in the GERB-dominated government of Boyko Borisov. Prior to that, he ran his own building and development company.
Prime minister: Boyko Borisov
Boyko Borisov formed a centre-right coalition government made up of his GERB party and the Reformist Bloc in November 2014, following snap elections the previous month.
The prime minister said his new government would work to guarantee stability, but warned that hard times lay ahead, highlighting economic stagnation, blocked EU funding, poverty and delayed reforms.
He is hampered by a lack of an overall majority in parliament, where the coalition is dependent on on the support of centre-left and nationalist parties.
Mr Borisov was prime minister between 2009 and February 2013, when he stepped down during mass anti-poverty protests.
During his previous term, he pushed ahead with infrastructure projects but failed to reform the pension, healthcare and education systems.
Boyko Borisov is a former bodyguard and firefighter. He entered politics in 2001, and is a former mayor of Sofia. He is noted for his "macho" public image.
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Doctor Who - BBC One | By Lizo MzimbaEntertainment correspondent, BBC News
Put your slippers on and stock up on TV dinners.
While there's been no shortage of TV treats over Christmas, the good news is there will be plenty more to feast your eyes on in 2018.
Ten new time travel adventures featuring the show's first female Doctor will air in the autumn of 2018. Right now little is known about Jodie Whittaker's first series, except that she'll be joined on the show by Bradley Walsh, Tosin Cole, Mandip Gill and Sharon D Clarke.
Westworld - Sky Atlantic/HBO
The first series of the mind bending, futuristic thriller Westworld was a ratings and critical success. Expect the second season, likely to air late in the year, to delve more deeply into both the sinister goings-on and the dark history of the robot inhabited Westworld theme park.
The Handmaid's Tale - Channel 4/Hulu
The dystopian drama, adapted from Margaret Atwood's best seller, simultaneously thrilled and terrified audiences. The first series closely shadowed the events of Atwood's book, but as the author didn't write a second, Offred (played by Elisabeth Moss) will almost certainly see her story enter into completely new territory.
13 Reasons Why - Netflix
The story of the lead up to and aftermath of a young girl taking her own life was the one of the most talked about series of 2017, exploring an uncomfortable but very real issue affecting huge numbers of young people. The next 13 episodes promise to further explore the effect of Hannah's death on her friends and her community.
Good Omens - Amazon Prime/BBC
Michael Sheen plays angel Aziraphale and David Tennant plays the demon Crowley in this adaptation of the late Terry Prachett's comedy best seller which follows the pair's often hilarious attempts to prevent the apocalypse, following the birth of the son of Satan.
Roseanne - ABC
The comedy following the misadventures of the Connor family was one of the biggest hits of the 1990s. This reboot, which airs from March, sees the original cast of Roseanne Barr and John Goodman returning to see if the show aimed at reflecting and entertaining middle class families can work for a new generation of viewers.
Strike: Career of Evil - BBC One
This two-part series is the third story adapted from the books by J K Rowling (writing as Robert Galbraith). This time around a dangerous and mysterious figure from private detective Cormoran Strike's (Tom Burke) past threatens him and his assistant Robin Ellacott (Holliday Grainger).
Sharp Objects - HBO/Sky Atlantic
A series based on the debut novel from Gillian Flynn, the best selling author of Gone Girl. It stars Oscar nominee Amy Adams as a journalist, haunted by demons from her past, returning to her home town which has been hit by a series of brutal murders. It'll air from June in the US.
Kiss Me First - E4/Netflix
The man behind Skins, Bryan Elsley, has written this series about two girls who first meet on an online gaming website and then encounter each other in real life. The six-part series will air early in the year and feature live action along with computer-generated virtual world sequences.
Heathers - Paramount Network
The film of Heathers was a dark 1980s high school comedy/drama. This reimagining for the 21st Century is a 10-part series where three girls all called Heather suffer at the hands of the popular high school elite. Shannen Doherty who starred in the original film has a cameo role this time around. Look out for this in the first few months of 2018.
A Very English Scandal - BBC One/Amazon Prime
It was one of the biggest scandals of the 1970s, when Jeremy Thorpe became the first British politician to stand trial for conspiracy and incitement to murder. Hugh Grant stars as the disgraced MP and Ben Whishaw plays his lover Norman Scott, in a three-part story from Doctor Who and Queer As Folk writer Russell T Davies.
Game of Thrones - Sky Atlantic/HBO
The bad news is that there are only six episodes left of the epic fantasy drama. The worse news is that it shouldn't even be on this list, because the final episodes probably won't air in 2018. Instead it looks like fans will have to wait until 2019 to find out who will win the Iron Throne.
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I remember the soul-searching well.
| Mark EastonHome editor@BBCMarkEastonon Twitter
The UK had been labelled the worst country in the west for a child to grow up in. Politicians, church leaders and charities complained that a generation was being failed.
The evidence for this gloomy prognosis was a Unicef report on child well-being in rich countries.
The UK emerged an ignominious 21st out of 21 developed nations and Time magazine ran a front cover suggesting British children were "unhappy, unloved and out of control".
Now we have the much anticipated update and similar voices are out in force to make the same point.
Education Minister David Laws says the report "lays bare Labour's failures on education and child well-being".
Save the Children warns about young people being left "without the investment that gives them a fair chance in life" and the Children's Society says the report "shows we still have a very long way to go".
Not perfect
Reading these responses one might imagine that Unicef had identified the same desperate and dismal findings that so shocked Britain when they reported in 2007.
But, actually, I think this document chronicles some really important progress.
Not everything is perfect, there are still huge challenges ahead, but there is much to welcome in the new report.
And to ignore the improvements is to risk maintaining the discussion of youth in the UK as one of problems rather than progress.
Look at the stats: Our young people are drinking less, smoking less, taking fewer drugs.
While half the countries in the report have seen their children getting fatter, in the UK fewer youngsters are overweight than in the previous report.
Teenagers are involved in less fighting and when you ask them about their own sense of life satisfaction, British kids report one of the biggest improvements in the western world.
British trait
Much is made of the report's findings on "education well-being".
It is true that the proportion of 15-19-year-olds who remain in education sees the UK at the bottom of the league table.
But this is a statistic likely to be transformed by changes in England which make education compulsory up to 17 this year and up to 18 in 2015. The figures for "Neets" should also be improved by the measure.
Actually, educational achievement by 15-year-olds in the UK compares more favourably with other developed countries than many might imagine.
They out-perform the Danes, the Irish, the French, the Americans - even the Swedes. We come 11th out of 29 rich nations - not good enough, perhaps, but hardly desperate.
The reasons for the gloomy response to the report are largely political.
The coalition government is quick to point out that report only compares data up to 2010 and is therefore a verdict on the previous administration. Small wonder they focus on the bad stuff.
Charities concerned with child welfare are also reluctant to sound too positive - not least because of anxieties over how austerity will impact on young people's lives in the coming years.
And it is quite right to point out that 16th in the overall well-being table is still not good enough. Why are our children apparently faring less well than those in the Czech Republic or Slovenia?
It is a British trait to obsess about the bad without giving proper recognition to the good.
Of course we shouldn't hang out the bunting and cry "job done!" but there is surely value in considering where and how we have achieved success.
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A man has admitted strangling his mother. | Celia Levitt, 68, was pronounced dead at a home on Stoneleigh Road, Bromley, after police were called at about 01:00 BST on 31 August last year.
At the Old Bailey, her son Barry, 36, denied murder but pleaded guilty to manslaughter by reason of diminished responsibility.
Prosecutors asked for more time to consider the plea while a further psychiatric report was prepared.
Levitt was remanded in custody until a further hearing on 1 March.
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It is like a military operation.
| By Rebecca MorelleScience reporter, BBC News
There are team briefings, kit is checked and then checked again.
But dealing with South East Asia's sun bear is not straightforward. It is the world's smallest bear - but also one of the most dangerous.
Today, two are being moved between zoos in the UK - from the Rare Species Conservation Centre in Kent to Colchester Zoo in Essex.
But while the bears are anaesthetised and given an essential check-up before their journey, it also gives Dr Masters access to a precious resource: their DNA.
Dr Masters explains: "We are losing species too quickly, therefore we ought to preserve at least the genetic material that has taken millions and millions of years to evolve."
The sun bear samples are heading to the Frozen Ark, which has its headquarters at the University of Nottingham.
Here they are frozen and then stored with samples that have been collected, by a network of vets and scientists, from endangered species all around the world.
The team behind the Frozen Ark says that it could provide the ultimate back-up plan for when all other conservation efforts fail.
Dr Ann Clarke, one of the Frozen Ark's founders, comments: "Like Dolly the sheep, although scientists do not like to talk too much about this, there is a very real possibility that we might be able to one day bring back an extinct or a very endangered species."
While bringing extinct animals back from the dead sounds like science fiction, thanks to recent advances in cloning technology it is much closer to reality than you might think.
In 2009, a Spanish team created a clone of the extinct Pyrenean ibex.
The animal died shortly after birth, but it has marked the beginnings for this new - and controversial - branch of conservation biology.
Professor Robert Millar thinks this technology could prove to be the saviour for the beleaguered rhino.
We join him in a wilderness reserve in South Africa where the current threat to this horned giant is all too apparent.
More than 200 rhinos have been killed by poachers in the last year, their horns sold in Asia and the Middle East where they are used for medicine and ornaments.
The situation has got so bad that locals have likened it to the rhino wars of the 1980s, and we have been asked not to name our location for fear this area could also be targeted.
The southern white rhinos here, at first appearing like boulders on the shimmering horizon of the African bush, were until recently a conservation success story.
This species was brought back from the brink of extinction through tough protection measures.
But all of this hard work could be undone. The renewed threat of poaching has meant the number of deaths is close to, if not already exceeding, the number of births.
Professor Millar, director of the Institute for Breeding Rare and Endangered African Mammals (Ibream) and director of the MRC Human Reproductive Sciences Unit, says it is time to put back-up plans in place.
At the moment, he says, very little is known about the southern white rhino's reproductive biology, so the Ibream team has been looking at hormones in the animal's droppings to find out more.
And with this key information, should the southern white numbers begin to plummet once again, scientists can more easily embark on captive breeding programmes, artificial insemination or even IVF.
But this knowledge could also help an animal in an even more critical state: the northern white rhino.
This close cousin of the southern white is a whisker away from extinction.
There are practically none in the wild and only a few ageing animals left in zoos.
But Professor Millar thinks cloning could prove to be a plan B - thanks to some northern white tissue collected and stored several years ago at the National Zoological Gardens of South Africa.
He says: "Cloning is very extreme but, given the fact that the northern white rhino is on the verge of extinction, I think we need to consider this technology."
Professor Millar explains: "We are using techniques to encourage these cells to become what we call pluripotent, which means they can become any kind of cell.
"And in that way you can turn these cells into embryos."
But if the team can succeed in creating embryos, it needs somewhere for the foetuses to grow. And this is where the southern white could help.
These rhinos are so closely related to the northern white that they would make the perfect surrogate in which to implant the clone.
He says: "With that kind of approach one could hopefully recreate northern white rhinos."
While the northern white rhino's comeback might be some years off, this work, and the various international efforts to bank endangered animals' DNA, suggests that cloning could form part of a future conservation strategy.
However, it is not without its critics.
Some say that the technical hurdles are just too high: the current low success rate of this technology and the question of where to implant a cloned embryo if no close surrogates are available are just a few of the problems.
And then there is the expense: this technology is costly, and it could drain funds away from tried and tested conservation measures.
Add to this the ethics - the argument that this takes meddling with nature several steps too far.
But for the Frozen Ark's Dr Clarke, these objections can all be dealt with later. The important thing for her is to bank genetic material now before it is too late.
She says: "It is for future generations to decide what should be done with the materials available.
"If we at this stage haven't preserved that material, we will have no options. We will have no choice, we will be able to do nothing."
However, she adds that she has not given up hope that many species can still be saved without having to use this controversial technology.
But we need to act now and we need to act quickly.
And if this can be done, she says, this genetic weapon of last resort can be left safely stored for posterity in the freezer. A frozen reminder of the conservation crisis we faced in 2010.
Around the BBC
Return of the Rhino: A Last Chance to See Special
Related Internet Links
Frozen Ark
Colchester Zoo
Rare Species Conservation Centre
The University of Nottingham
Ibream
MRC Human Reproductive Sciences Unit
National Zoological Gardens of South Africa
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A chronology of key events:
| 1918 - After the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in the First World War, British forces occupy the oil-rich Ottoman province of Mosul, bringing extensive Kurdish-populated areas under British rule.
1919 - Mosul area is added to the new Iraqi state, which comes under a British mandate.
1920 - Treaty of Sevres, signed by the defeated Ottoman government, provides for a Kurdish state, subject to the agreement of the League of Nations. Article 64 of the Treaty gives Kurds living in the Mosul vilayet the option of joining a future independent Kurdistan.
1921 - Emir Faysal crowned king of Iraq, including Mosul.
Uprising
1923 - Shaykh Mahmud Barzinji rebels against British rule and declares a Kurdish kingdom in northern Iraq.
1923 - Kemal Ataturk's newly founded Turkish Republic gains international recognition with the Treaty of Lausanne. The Treaty of Sevres is not ratified by the Turkish parliament.
1924 - Sulaymaniyah falls to British forces.
1932 - Uprising in the Barzan region to protest at Iraq's admittance to the League of Nations, while Kurdish demands for autonomy are ignored.
1943 - Mullah Mustafa Barzani leads another uprising, and wins control of large areas of Irbil and Badinan.
1946 August - British RAF bombing forces Kurdish rebels over border into Iran where they join Iranian Kurds led by Qazi Mohamed, who founds an independent Kurdish state in Mahabad.
1946 - Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) holds its first congress in Mahabad. Within a few months, the "Mahabad Republic" collapses under attack from Iranian forces, and Mustafa Barzani flees to the Soviet Union.
1951 - A new generation of Kurdish nationalists revives the KDP. Mullah Mustafa Barzani is nominated president while in exile in the Soviet Union, but the real leader of the KDP is Ibrahim Ahmad, who favours close ties with the Iraqi Communist Party.
1958 - Overthrow of the Iraqi monarchy allows Kurdish nationalists to organise openly after many years in hiding. A new Iraqi constitution recognises Kurdish "national rights" and Mullah Mustafa Barzani returns from exile.
1960 - Relations between the Iraqi government and Kurdish groups become strained. The KDP complains of increasing repression.
1961 - KDP is dissolved by the Iraqi government after Kurdish rebellion in northern Iraq.
Autonomy granted
1970 March - Iraqi government and the Kurdish parties agree a peace accord, which grants the Kurds autonomy. The accord recognises Kurdish as an official language and amends the constitution to state that: "the Iraqi people is made up of two nationalities, the Arab nationality and the Kurdish nationality."
1971 August - Relations between the Kurds and the Iraqi government deteriorate. Mullah Mustafa Barzani appeals to the US for aid.
1974 March - Iraqi government imposes a draft of the autonomy agreement and gives the KDP two weeks to respond. Mullah Mustafa Barzani rejects the agreement, which would have left the oilfields of Kirkuk under Iraqi government control, and calls for a new rebellion.
1975 March - Algiers Accord between Iran and Iraq ends Iranian support for the Kurdish uprising, which collapses. Barzani withdraws from political life.
1975 June - Jalal Talabani, a former leading member of the KDP, announces the establishment of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) from Damascus.
1978 - Clashes between KDP and PUK forces leave many dead.
1979 - Mullah Mustafa dies, his son Massoud Barzani takes over the leadership of the KDP.
Iranian involvement
1980 - Outbreak of war between Iran and Iraq. KDP forces work closely with Iran, but the PUK remains hostile to cooperation with Tehran.
1983 - An Iranian counterattack opens a northern front in Kurdish northern Iraq. With support from KDP fighters, Iranian troops take the key town of Hajj Umran. Human rights organisations say Iraqi troops killed around 8,000 men from the KDP leader's home area of Barzan in revenge.
1983 - PUK agrees to a ceasefire with Iraq and begins negotiations on Kurdish autonomy.
1985 - Under increasing Iraqi government repression, the ceasefire begins to break down. Pro-Iraqi government militia men kill Jalal Talabani's brother and two nieces.
1986 - Iranian government sponsors a meeting reconciling the KDP and PUK. Now both major Kurdish parties are receiving support from Tehran.
1987 - Jalal Talabani and Massoud Barzani join forces with a number of smaller Kurdish factions to create the Kurdistan Front.
1988 - As the Iran-Iraq war draws to a close, Iraqi forces launch the "Anfal Campaign" against the Kurds. Tens of thousands of Kurdish civilians and fighters are killed, and hundreds of thousands forced into exile, in a systematic attempt to break the Kurdish resistance movement.
1988 16 March - Thousands of Kurdish civilians die in a poison gas attack on the town of Halabjah near the Iranian border. Human rights watchdogs and Kurdish groups hold the Iraqi regime responsible.
1991 March - After the Gulf War in which US-led forces expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait, Iraq puts down a Kurdish rebellion. Around 1.5 million Kurds flee before the Iraqi onslaught, but Turkey closes the border forcing hundreds of thousands to seek refuge in the mountains.
Safe haven
1991 April - Coalition forces announce the creation of a "safe haven" on the Iraqi side of the border. International aid agencies launch a massive aid operation to help the refugees. Meanwhile, Jalal Talabani and Massoud Barzani open negotiations with Saddam Hussein on autonomy for Kurdistan.
1991 July - Talks continue in Baghdad, but Kurdish peshmerga forces take control of Irbil and Sulaymaniyah, in defiance of Iraqi government orders.
1991 October - Fighting between Kurdish and Iraqi government forces breaks out in earnest. Saddam Hussein fortifies the border of Kurdish-held northern Iraq and imposes a blockade.
1992 May - Elections held in areas under Kurdish control give KDP candidates 50.8% of the vote, while the PUK takes 49.2%. The two parties are equally balanced in the new Kurdish government.
1992 September - Newly-established Iraqi National Congress (INC), which brings together a wide-range of Iraqi opposition groups, meets in Salah-al-Din in the Kurdish-held north. KDP and PUK representatives take part.
1994-97 - Civil war involving KDP and PUK forces.
1996 May - UN agrees "Oil-for-Food" programme with Baghdad; 13% of the proceeds from Iraqi oil exports are earmarked for the three northern governorates, which are largely under Kurdish control.
1996 August - Masoud Barzani appeals to Saddam Hussein for help to defeat the PUK.
1996 September - With the help of Iraqi government troops, KDP forces seize the northern city of Irbil and take the PUK stronghold of Sulaymaniyah. A new KDP-led government is announced at the parliament building in Irbil.
1996 October - PUK forces retake Sulaymaniyah.
1997 January - PUK announces a new government based in Sulaymaniyah. Both the PUK and KDP claim jurisdiction over the whole of the Kurdish-controlled north.
1998 September - Jalal Talabani and Masoud Barzani sign a peace agreement in Washington, but government of the Kurdish region remains split between the two rival administrations.
2000 November - In a letter to the United Nations secretary-general, the PUK accuses the Iraqi government of expelling Kurdish families from Kirkuk.
2001 September - Fighting breaks out between the PUK and the Islamic fundamentalist group Jund al-Islam, later renamed Ansar al-Islam.
Moves toward unity
2002 June - PUK and KDP officials take part in joint discussions with other Iraqi groups aimed at coordinating the work of the opposition in the event of a US-led military campaign against Iraq.
2002 October - Joint session of the Kurdish parliament convenes in Irbil. KDP and PUK parliamentarians agree to work together during a "transitional session" until new elections can be held.
2003 February - US Secretary of State Colin Powell accuses Iraqi Kurdish Islamist group Ansar al-Islam of playing a pivotal role in linking Osama Bin Ladin's al-Qaeda network with the Iraqi regime.
2003 February - Kurdish leaders reject proposals to bring Turkish troops into northern Iraq as part of a US-led military campaign to oust Saddam Hussein. Anti-Turkish demonstrators take to the streets of Kurdish towns.
2003 February - Failure of a parliamentary bill allowing US troops to deploy on Turkish soil hits American plans to open a northern front against Iraq.
2003 3 March - KDP and PUK create a "joint higher leadership" in the Kurdish-held north, under the chairmanship of the two party leaders, Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani.
US-led campaign against Iraq
2003 20 March - US-led coalition forces invade Iraq and begin bombardment of Baghdad and other cities. Mosul and Kirkuk near the Kurdish enclaves come under heavy fire.
2003 22 March - Coalition forces launch Cruise missile attack on bases held by Ansar al-Islam in the north. Dozens killed in the headquarters of the Islamic Group, an unrelated radical Islamist faction when a missile hits the Khormal area.
2003 27 March - Hundreds of US paratroopers land near Irbil, signalling the opening of a northern front in the war on Iraq.
2003 9 April - US forces advance into central Baghdad. Saddam Hussein's grip on the city is broken. In the following days Kurdish fighters and US forces take control of the northern cities of Kirkuk and Mosul.
2003 July - Interim governing council (IGC) meets for first time. Saddam's sons Uday and Qusay killed in gun battle in Mosul.
2004 1 February - At least 56 people die and more than 200 people are injured after a double suicide bombing at the offices of the two main political Kurdish parties in the northern city of Irbil. Several senior political figures are among the dead.
2005 January - An alliance of Kurdish parties comes second in Iraq's landmark national election, sending 77 deputies to an interim parliament.
2005 April - PUK leader Jalal Talabani is elected as interim Iraqi president by MPs.
2005 May - At least 50 people are killed in a suicide bomb attack on police recruits in Irbil.
Kurdish parliament
2005 June - First session of Kurdish parliament held in Irbil; KDP's Massoud Barzani is president of autonomous region.
2005 December - News that a foreign firm has begun drilling for oil in the Kurdish north sparks new fears of secession among Iraqi Sunni leaders. Kurdish authorities later report a "major discovery" of oil.
2006 September - Massoud Barzani orders the Iraqi national flag be replaced with the Kurdish one in government buildings. But Iraq's Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki says: "The Iraqi flag is the only flag that should be raised over any square inch of Iraq."
2006 September - Five blasts caused by one suicide truck bomb and four car bombs kill 23 people in Kirkuk.
The BBC's Newsnight programme reports that former Israeli commandos secretly trained Kurdish soldiers in Northern Iraq to protect a new international airport and in counter-terrorism operations.
2007 April - The head of Turkey's military says his country should launch an operation against Kurdish guerillas based in northern Iraq.
2007 May - The Kurdish regional government takes over responsibility for security in the three Kurdish provinces from the US forces.
2007 July - Human Rights Watch gives details of torture and abuse in prisons run by the Kurds in the Kurdish area of northern Iraq.
2007 August - At least 300 people are killed in a series of bomb attacks on members of the Kurdish Yazidi sect in northern Iraq.
2007 September - Iran shells rear bases of Kurdish rebels in Iraqi Kurdistan.
Iran closes its border with Iraqi Kurdistan to protest at the detention of an Iranian by US troops.
Turkish attacks
2007 October - Turkish parliament gives go-ahead for military operations in Iraq in pursuit of Kurdish rebels. Turkey comes under international pressure to avoid an invasion.
2007 November - A referendum on whether Kirkuk province should become part of Iraqi Kurdistan is due to be held, but is in the event put on hold indefinitely.
2007 December - Turkey launches air strikes on fighters from the Kurdish PKK movement inside Iraq.
2008 February - Turkish forces mount a ground offensive against PKK Kurdish rebel bases in northern Iraq.
2008 September - Iraqi parliament passes provincial elections law. City of Kirkuk, claimed by Kurdistan Region, is excluded from provisions of law until its status is settled.
2009 April - Turkish warplanes bomb PKK Kurdish rebel positions in northern Iraq after Turkey accused the group of killing Turkish soldiers in two attacks.
2009 June - The Kurdish government begins crude oil exports to foreign markets. Contractors are to pump 90,000-100,000 barrels a day from two northern oilfields to Turkey. The central government is allowing its pipeline to be used in return for a share of revenues.
2009 July - Massoud Barzani is re-elected as president of Kurdish autonomous region.
Ruling two-party coalition wins parliamentary election, but with reduced majority. Recently-formed group Change Movement (Gorran) wins 25 seats in 111-seat regional parliament.
2011 February - Public protests against corruption and power held by KDP and PUK start in Sulaymaniyah city, heartland of opposition Change Movement; at least two protestors killed.
2011 August and October - Turkey launches air and ground assaults on PKK militants in Iraqi Kurdistan.
Oil row
2012 April/May - Oil exports from Iraqi Kurdistan are halted amid a row with central government over contracts with foreign firms. The region says it expects to start exporting oil via a new pipeline to the Turkish border in 2013.
2012 June - Turkish air force strikes at Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) rebel bases in northern Iraq days after eight Turkish soldiers are killed in a PKK attack in southern Turkey.
2012 September - Turkish air force says it kills 25 PKK rebels in further strikes on bases in northern Iraq.
2012 December - Jalal Talabani, Iraq's Kurdish president, suffers a stroke. He undergoes treatment in Germany and makes progress.
2013 April - At least 31 people are killed and more than 200 others wounded in explosions in cities across the country, including Kurdistan.
2013 June - Iraqi cabinet holds a meeting in Iraqi Kurdistan in a symbolic effort to reduce tensions over a range of political and economic disputes.
Refugee flood
2013 May - Flood of refugees from Syria prompts authorities to shut the border temporarily.
2013 August - President Barzani secures a two-year extension to his second term of office.
2013 September - Regional parliamentary elections provide an upset to the government, as the opposition Change Movement wins 24 seats, pushing Iraqi President Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) into third place. The Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) of regional President Massoud Barzani remains the largest bloc with 38 seats.
2014 March - The Iraqi government under Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki blocks the transfer of revenues to the Kurdish authorities, leaving regional leaders unable to pay the salaries of officials.
2014 May - Kurdistan officially markets its first pipeline oil, despite opposition from the government in Baghdad.
2014 June - As the Sunni coalition led by the hardline Islamists of ISIS (The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) seizes control of much of Anbar Province and the approaches to Baghdad, Kurdish Peshmerga forces capture Kirkuk - the oil-rich city outside the borders of Iraqi Kurdistan that Iraqi Kurds have long regarded as their capital.
Independence plans
2014 July - President Barzani announces plans for an independence referendum later in the year, saying that independence is a "natural right".
2014 August - Islamic State conquers several Kurdish-held towns.
US jets support Kurdish Peshmerga forces by striking jihadist positions.
Islamic State defeat Peshmerga forces defending town of Sinjar, prompting an exodus by people of the Yazidi religious sect.
US, Iraqi government supply Peshmerga fighters with weapons to help them battle Islamists.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki - who had come to be seen as an increasingly divisive figure who alienated the Kurds - is replaced by Haider al-Abadi.
2014 September - Kurdish leaders agree to put independence referendum on hold, on the grounds that fighting Islamic State is currently the top priority.
2014 October - The Iraqi Kurdistan government sends Peshmerga forces to the northern Syrian city of Kobane - via Turkey - to back fellow Kurdish fighters attempting to defend the city from attack by Islamic State militants.
2014 December - The Iraqi government and the Kurdish leadership sign a deal on sharing Iraq's oil wealth and military resources, amid hopes that the agreement will help to reunite the country in the face of the common threat represented by Islamic State.
Peshmerga and Syrian Kurdish fighters retake Mount Sinjar from Islamic State forces.
Constitutional reform
2015 May - Iraqi Kurdistan parliament appoints committee to oversee revision of constitution. One of the issues under review is the number of terms the president should be allowed to serve.
2015 June - President Barzani's chief of staff announces that a presidential election will be held on 20 August, a day after Mr Barzani's current term of office expires. The president's critics accuse him of seeking to pre-empt any revision to the constitution that would prevent him from serving a further term.
2015 July - Turkey joins the US-led military alliance against Islamic State but insists that air-strikes against IS should go hand-in-hand with operations against Kurdish PKK militants in northern Iraq. Ankara launches a bombing campaign against the PKK in northern Iraq - the first time that it has attacked the Kurds since reaching a ceasefire with them in 2013.
2015 August - Barzani's extended term in office ends. He is given another two years in a move described by the opposition as illegal.
2015 September - A US court rules in favour of an Iraqi government bid to block Kurdish oil sales to a US buyer.
2015 October - Gorran (Change Movement) expelled from coalition government following days of violent street protests against Barzani.
Parliament is suspended.
2015 November - Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga forces and Turkish-Kurdish PKK guerrilla fighters, backed by US-led coalition forces, recapture Sinjar town from IS.
2015 December - Iraqi parliament approves allocation of Kurdistan Region's 17 per cent share of the national budget despite opposition from the Dawa Party of former Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.
2016 January - Barzani says era of Sykes-Picot agreement and the Treaty of Lusanne that divided the Middle East has ended and the international community needs to redraw borders to include a Kurdish state.
Financial crisis
2016 February - Regional government decides to cut the pay of public service employees to tackle a deepening financial crisis.
2016 April - US begins paying salaries of the Kurdish Peshmerga fighters taking part in the anti-IS battles.
2016 June - Regional government threatens to cut water supplies from the Tigris River to the rest of Iraq after Baghdad buys smaller than expected quantities of wheat products from Kurdistan.
2016 June - Peshmerga forces report increasing use of "chemical weapons" by IS and plead for more weapons for fight the militants.
2016 July - US and regional government sign a memo of understanding for Washington to provide more military aid to Peshmerga forces, a move which angers Baghdad.
2016 August - Germany resumes direct shipment of weapons to Iraqi Kurdistan after regional government pledges to prevent the weapons from ending up on the black market.
2016 August - Abduction and killing of Iraqi Kurdish journalist Wedat Hussein Ali in the KDP stronghold of Duhok Province draws widespread condemnation.
2016 September - Civil servants announce indefinite strike mainly in Sulaymaniyah Province over pay cuts and delays in salary payments.
2016 October - IS carries out a commando attack in Kirkuk's inner districts. Peshmerga and volunteers reclaim full control of the city after several days of street-to-street fighting.
2016 November - Peshmerga capture the mainly Christian town of Baashiqa from IS as part of operations to recapture Mosul. Peshmerga officials say they will not advance beyond the town.
2016 November - Human Rights Watch (HRW) accuses Peshmerga forces of systematically destroying Arab homes and villages in areas retaken from IS.
2016 December - The Kurdistan region says it will not abide by an OPEC agreement to reduce oil production to help cut Iraq's overall oil output.
American oil giant Exxon Mobil pulls out of half of the six exploration blocks it operated across Iraqi Kurdistan.
Increased oil activity
2017 January - Russian Gazprom Neft plans to increase oil extraction in Iraqi Kurdistan despite the security threat posed by IS.
2017 February - Turkey raises the Kurdistan region flag during a visit by Barzani.
2017 March - The governor of disputed city of Kirkuk orders the Kurdistan regional flag to be flown over all government buildings, drawing condemnation from Baghdad as well as Iran and Turkey.
2017 April - Turkish jets carry out deadly air strikes on Peshmerga positions near Sinjar in Iraq and Syrian Kurdish fighters across the border in Syria.
Russia's Rosneft reportedly pays 1 bn US dollars in advance for Iraqi Kurdistan's crude oil, signalling growing Russian interest in the region's natural resources.
Date set for referendum
2017 June - A cross-party meeting led by President Barzani agrees to hold an independence referendum on 25 September.
2017 August - Prominent Kurds establish the "No for now" movement, saying it would be wrong to hold a referendum under current security and economic conditions.
The provincial council of disputed Kirkuk votes to take part in the referendum.
2017 September - Independence referendum goes ahead in the face of international opposition. Baghdad moves to assert its authority and imposes punitive measures.
2017 October - President Barzani resigns.
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Sounds good. | By Becky MortonBBC News
How would you feel if you texted a friend to invite them round for dinner and this reply popped up on your phone?
Concerned? Offended? Or would you not give it a second thought?
What about if they replied:
sounds good
or even
Sounds good!
Internet linguist Gretchen McCulloch says more and more people now see ending messages with a full stop as rude because of the way we text and use instant messaging apps like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger.
"If you're a young person and you're sending a message to someone, the default way to break up your thoughts is to send each thought as a new message," she says.
"Because the minimum thing necessary to send is the message itself, anything additional you include can take on an additional interpretation."
A 2015 study by Binghamton University involving 126 undergraduates found they perceived text messages ending in a full stop as being less sincere than the same message without a full stop.
In speech, the full stop is generally accompanied by lowering the voice to indicate the end of a sentence and carries connotations of formality or seriousness, Ms McCulloch explains.
"This can be fine if your message is already serious," she says.
"The problem comes when you have a positive message with the seriousness of the full stop. It's the juxtaposition of those things which creates that sense of passive aggression."
So how can we tell if someone is actually annoyed or just using a full stop in the traditional sense?
Erika Darics, a lecturer in linguistics at Aston University in Birmingham, says it is all down to context.
"If you and your friends don't normally use full stops in a WhatsApp group and then somebody does, they are probably trying to tell you something about how they feel," says Dr Darics.
She says someone's age and how often they use messaging apps can also affect how they use punctuation.
Often these differences are more significant than differences in nationality, Ms McCulloch - who is Canadian - argues. Using a full stop in messages seems to have similar connotations in both North America and the UK, she adds.
However, there can be some cultural differences between countries - Americans and Canadians don't use "x" to denote a kiss at the end of a message, while Brits do, she says.
Laziness or linguistic creativity?
Use of informal grammar and text slang in messaging can lead to accusations of dumbing down and making people lazy.
But Ms McCulloch points out that using slang or incorrect spellings actually takes more effort in an age of autocorrect and predictive text.
Online messaging also forces people to develop new ways of conveying emotion and meaning without the use of body language or tone of voice.
"Going back to the 1500s there have been proposals for an irony punctuation mark but none of those caught on," says Ms McCulloch.
"But within a few short decades of being online we've come up with so many ways of conveying irony and other meaning."
For example, the acronym "lol" (laugh out loud) can be used sarcastically, as can the upside-down face emoji.
"Things like emojis raise awareness of language and can help us understand subtleties in other types of communication, like politics or propaganda," says Dr Darics.
"It encourages linguistic creativity."
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What is all the fuss about? | Laura KuenssbergPolitical editor@bbclaurakon Twitter
Listen to ministers and all they are trying to do is tidy up the paperwork, cross the t's and dot the i's. Listen to Labour and Theresa May is trying her luck as a despot, grabbing power in great chunks, never again to give our elected representatives the chance to argue or even consider what's being done on our behalf.
Guess what? As ever in politics the truth is somewhere in between, whatever the two sides say. We are leaving the EU in less than two years (pretty much inevitably unless something really surprising happens).
But much of our law is based on EU law and EU institutions. So when we leave, in theory we lose lots of law overnight, and much of it simply won't make sense any more in thousands and thousands of areas.
Harmless tweaks?
Sounds strange, but hypothetically that's what could happen. Right now the EU rules that have over the years been incorporated into our statute books govern everything from chemicals to beaches to immigration to animal welfare to aviation. This list goes on and on, and it is safe to assume EU law shapes pretty much everything.
The idea behind the Withdrawal Bill is therefore to cut and paste the lot into British law, so that we don't wake up the morning after we leave the EU in 2019 with a free-for-all.
So far, so uncontroversial. Here's the problem. The amount of stuff, the sheer volume of the rules and regulations that need to be transferred is so massive, basically our entire statute book, that the government says there is just no way there will be time to debate it all, let alone vote on every bit.
Their solution is to use so-called 'Henry VIII powers', evoking the image of a medieval monarch, ruling by whim and decree. In practice this could mean that on thousands of rules, regulations, ministers can make changes, whether harmless tweaks or suspicious alterations, without having to consult other MPs, let alone give them a vote.
Crucially, it would allow ministers to change things where they think it is "appropriate", in theory that makes their decisions even exempt to legal challenge. As it stands, the bill also gives ministers the power to choose the day of our actual exit from the EU, without asking Parliament, and it could also give them the power to designate different days for Brexit in different legal areas.
There are therefore clear reasons for there to be nerves on all sides of the House of Commons about the bill.
Ministers accept privately that they will probably have to budge in some areas. But tonight's midnight vote is not likely to be the big showdown.
Tory rebels will, in the main, vote for the bill in principle, and enter hand-to-hand combat in the more detailed stages in the next couple of months. And although the opposition will vote against the bill this evening, there are also anxious MPs on that side of the House of Commons who won't, worried about appearing to be blocking Brexit by "killing the bill".
But tonight will be the first real taste of the months to come, the House of Commons sitting until midnight, the government anxiously totting up the numbers, MPs being told to cancel any plans they have to be around for vital votes.
Tonight's likely approval of the bill won't wash away the real concerns, and once it makes it to the House of Lords the battles could be even more fraught.
PS: Potential Tory rebels might find a little relief in this nugget. Despite reports that the government chief whip, Gavin Williamson, had acquired a second tarantula for his office, the better to torment his charges (yes he does have one), he told me this morning that in fact that is not the case. His spider, Cronus, is still his only office pet.
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Ouch! | Laura KuenssbergPolitical editor@bbclaurakon Twitter
There was no secret that the picture today's Autumn Statement would paint would not be pretty. But more than £100bn of extra borrowing, roughly equivalent to the entire NHS budget - nearly £60bn of that the costs of Brexit - make a brutal backdrop for Theresa May's government as it only just gets going.
Remember all the figures ought to be taken with a giant pinch of salt. Forecasts like these have so often been wrong. And no one is forecasting a recession.
But what the chancellor said today and the Office for Budget Responsibility has calculated have big implications.
First off, with the goal of balancing the books now an aspiration to be met as "early as possible", next Parliament, the Tories will be going into the next election, a decade after they took charge, without having kept the central promise they made 10 years before of clearing the deficit.
Yes, you read that right - a full decade. As political promises go, that is a less than glorious record.
Shaky finances
Voters will see the national debt hitting 90% of GDP, not shy of £2 trillion, 10 years after being told that tough spending cuts were worth it, because within five years we would be on our way back to the mythic sunlit uplands.
There is a separate debate about whether that was ever achievable, and how much Brexit can be blamed for the fact Mr Hammond has pushed those targets back again. But at the very least, it means the Conservatives will still be borrowing, and borrowing significantly, busting their own timetable by at least five years.
And with wages predicted to slow, and inflation expected to rise, the public will feel the pinch too. Simply, if today's forecasts are right, the government's finances are set to be shaky for a lot longer, and more voters will feel skint.
Despite Theresa May's repeated desire to help families who are finding it hard to make ends meet, there were few measures that will make a big difference.
Privately, Treasury sources acknowledge they haven't done that much, despite Number 10's hopes. The truth is that they didn't have much cash to play with.
And Mr Hammond's ambitions to rebuild the fundamentals of the economy were clearly his priority, rather than major concessions to help some groups of voters feel a bit more flush.
Indeed, the charts that estimate who is bearing the brunt of the government's policies suggest that when everything is taken into consideration, not just today's measures, the three poorest groups are all slightly worse off. The only group that loses more is the top 10%.
Pensions hint
Beyond all the charts and tables and documents, though, Mr Hammond dropped one giant hint which is perhaps politically one of the most important things of the day.
He was talking about the "triple lock", the guaranteed increases in the state pension, seen by many in Westminster privately to be completely unaffordable in the longer term, but few will yet say it in public.
He said: "And we will meet our pledge to our country's pensioners through the triple lock. But as we look ahead to the next Parliament, we will need to ensure we tackle the challenges of rising longevity and fiscal sustainability.
"And so the government will review public spending priorities and other commitments for the next Parliament in light of the evolving fiscal position at the next Spending Review."
That sounds pretty bland, but the implications are anything but. It holds out the possibility that the Tories could look at ditching those guarantees and "other commitments", perhaps the ring fence of the NHS Budget, when they look at what the country can afford after 2020.
It was only a hint, but in time it may become a very important one. Mr Hammond rarely says anything by mistake.
But, without fighting that political battle, there was plenty that was bruising enough from today's announcements, plenty to make the government's life harder, and indeed, potentially those of plenty of voters too.
PS As ever, the documents published alongside the statement bear close examination. In the coming days more important nuggets may emerge.
But a few quick ones that caught our eye - the administration of Brexit is expected to cost the taxpayer £412m. The government has set aside £60m a year for grammar schools to expand.
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We all know the Blackberry story. | Dave LeeNorth America technology reporter
Well before Apple's iPhone, Blackberry kicked off the smartphone revolution and brought the office out of the office and into the tap-tap-tap grasp of workers all over the world.
Ease of use and security made Blackberry handsets the choice for corporations everywhere - not to mention world leaders.
But the Blackberry went pear-shaped. Unable to keep up in a market of sophisticated phones, with vast app stores and big screens, Blackberry was soon seen as a boring business phone.
The firm, once known as Research in Motion, has had one glimmer of hope in recent times: Blackberry Messenger was unexpectedly popular with teenagers, but even BBM - as it was referred to - eventually lost out to Whatsapp and Snapchat as a the teen tool of choice.
Blackberry sales now account for less than 1% of the global smartphone market.
On Friday, Blackberry launches a new phone, which it is calling Priv by Blackberry.
Why?
It's a cliché to regard any new Blackberry launch these days as the "last throw of the dice". It's also unfair - it isn't.
Blackberry is sitting on $3bn of cash, and so there's room to keep trying for a while yet.
The Priv is an (other) attempt by Blackberry to hit some kind of great middle ground: A phone so secure it is trusted by company IT bosses, but pleasurable and simple enough so that normal people - ie the workers - want to use it.
Here's how it hopes to woo companies:
And to keep users happy:
Will it work?
By Blackberry's own admission, its handsets are performing terribly. So much so that current chief executive John Chen said he'd pull out of the device market if things didn't pick up soon.
But the Blackberry aesthetic has attracted some fans.
The unorthodox Blackberry Passport, which is square, was laughed at by many techies but impressed in the fashion community, picking up various design awards along the way.
By being aligned with corporate success, Blackberry devices can be a status symbol, like a sharp suit. It says "you must be doing something very important if you're using a Blackberry to do it".
Furthermore, as the Priv is an Android device, it means all the popular apps will be available - unlike previous Blackberrys which didn't support the likes of Uber and Instagram (although there were some attempts to emulate Android apps).
As for the downsides, while the rear camera is well-specced, the front-facing camera is a less impressive at 2 megapixels. Not great for selfies, naturally, but also bad for video conferencing over Skype, among others - so perhaps a turn-off for business customers.
At a cost of $700 for a sim-free handset (or £579.99 in the UK) - the new handset is in line with the iPhone and top-end Android devices.
Though a more aggressively priced device might have been what made people jump ship at their next upgrade.
What if it flops?
According to Forbes, less than 10% of Blackberry's value is from flogging handsets, and so the company can remain pretty calm if the Priv doesn't do well because the firm's security software side will prop it up - for now.
Mr Chen has said he wants to sell five million Privs in a year. That's compared with Apple which sold 48 million iPhones in its last quarter.
While Blackberry is not being too ambitious compared with Apple and Samsung, five million in one year would be a big improvement.
In its last quarter, Blackberry managed just 800,000 device sales.
If the Priv doesn't impress consumers and business people, it could well be Blackberry's last ever handset.
The company will survive, but it will always wonder what might have been had it kept up with the rapid mobile world.
Follow Dave Lee on Twitter @DaveLeeBBC
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"How much!?!" | By Leo Kelion and Joe WhitwellTechnology reporters
It wasn't so long ago that the tech press got in a tizz over the first $1,000 (£766) smartphones. Now we're being expected to stump up roughly double that for the entry-level version of Samsung's Galaxy Fold.
Yes, the phone-tablet hybrid seems to be a modern-day engineering marvel - although it is a bit concerning that neither the media nor industry analysts have been given any hands-on time with the device.
Yes, there's huge appeal in being able to fit a tablet-sized screen in your trouser or jacket pockets - even if the idea of getting coins trapped between the screens doesn't bear thinking about.
And yes, it's great to see a smartphone that doesn't look like 2001's black monolith - even if you'd have to be a very trusting parent to let your toddler watch YouTube on it.
In time, it may be considered that Samsung trumped Apple with its tenth anniversary release.
But $1,980+? You can buy a Galaxy S10e, iPad Pro, wireless headphones and still have change for a foreign break for that.
Anyway, here's what the press and general public had to make of the launch:
Financial Times:
Claiming industry "firsts" has always been central to Samsung's branding... However, with the foldable screens only just reaching commercial viability and pricing likely to put both Huawei and Samsung's models out of the reach of all but the wealthiest consumers, the devices are unlikely to affect the race for market share.
Cnet:
People are holding onto their smartphones longer than before, and it's getting harder to justify a pricey upgrade given the relatively minor tweaks made every year. The hope is that foldables can change that.
Ars Technica:
Apart from potential durability concerns with a device that's constantly being opened and closed, one of the big questions here is how well Samsung and Google have optimised Android for the foldable form factor.
The Verge:
It's fair to say that the Galaxy Fold looks far better when it's folded out than being used as a traditional phone. The phone display is clearly designed to be used with one hand, but it's flanked by large bezels that aren't found on the tablet mode.
The Guardian:
[The Fold] promises to be the next logical step in the evolution of the smartphone. It offers the utility of a phone and tablet in one device and looks set to see the smartphone cannibalise yet another device, following the death of the music player, the compact camera and perhaps soon the wallet.
Twitter
Reddit
If you walked around with a Nintendo DS in your pocket as a kid you'll probably end up buying this phone. - InternationalToque
How the heck are they going to make a protective case for this thing? Without a case, it's way too risky for non-rich people to buy - ckwing
A square-ish main display runs against the long screen trend we're in. - Abcess2
What's to stop me from taking two iPhones and duct taping them together?!? Hhhmmmmmmm. - M00SEKNUCKL
The price made my wallet fold closed. - GrayManTheory
I get the price is absurd but this is first-gen tech. It will get cheaper over the years. Complaining about the price is silly. You don't have to buy this phone. It's niche and honestly pretty cool. - Yvese
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Maybe money does grow on trees. | By Richard BlackEnvironment correspondent, BBC News
Certainly, you can find a growing number of people in the conservation movement suggesting that it does; and that if the money is to keep flowing, the wealth in the trees needs to be secured as safely as gold bars in any bank.
If forests do not actually sprout banknotes, they do provide services whose value in monetary terms can be measured... refuges for pollinating insects, roots that prevent landslides, absorption of climate-changing carbon dioixide - even places where we like to walk.
So do prairies and coral reefs and marshes and... well, pretty much any other life-bearing pieces of nature you care to mention.
A UN-backed project called The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (Teeb) has calculated that destruction of forests alone is costing the global economy $2-5 trillion per year.
And at October's meeting of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), virtually all of the world's governments pledged to look at changing their economic systems in order to reward behaviour that conserves and penalise activities that destroy; to pay to protect ecosystem services that bring humanity economic and other benefits.
Not from any hippyesque desire to save plants and animals; but because they believe it could make good economic sense.
From the conservationist's viewpoint, though, alarmed by the apparently relentless decline in global biodiversity, the motive may not matter.
"I think we need to look for innovative solutions that change the game a little bit," says Taylor Ricketts, director of the Conservation Science Programme with environmental group WWF.
"And I think this is one of them - aligning self-interest with conservation, as opposed to considering self-interest and the desire to make money and earn a living and develop economically to be a threat to biodiversity.
"If we're clever about it, we can align them so it actually re-inforces conservation."
Joshua Bishop, chief economist with the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and a major contributer to the Teeb report, agrees.
"Ecosystem services can be degraded or destroyed just as well as they can be produced," he says.
"If we don't look after the natural environment, we can no longer expect to receive the same quality or quantity of economic services that we've enjoyed in the past - hence the need for payment or some other incentive mechanism to encourage people to protect ecosystems instead of letting them deteriorate."
Holistic picture
The poster child for Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) is Costa Rica.
Back in the 1990s, concerned about the rapid loss of forests, its government took what was then a radical step: imposing a tax on fossil fuels, and using the proceeds to pay for forest protection.
"We came with the idea that the forest wouldn't be protected until we were fully able to recognise the economic services they were providing to society," says former Environment Minister Carlos Manuel Rodriguez.
Since then, the system has grown more complex, with financial incentives given for measures that conserve the water supply, which largely originates in forested land; and biodiversity is next on the agenda.
"There's a big industry in Costa Rica that makes profits out of biodiversity - that's ecotourism, and ecotourism generates revenues around $2bn per year, so that's an industry that uses biodiversity but doesn't pay for the access and for the use."
Charging them in order to preserve or even enhance the biodiversity they use should ensure it survives - for the benefit of those businesses, and everyone else, and nature itself.
One example where the economics worked out is found further north in the Americas - a far cry from Costa Rica's forests - in the water systems supplying New York City.
A generation ago, the Catskill Mountain reservoirs were under pressure, with excess fertiliser and unwise development compromising the supply of fresh water flowing to the teeming metropolis.
City authorities had a choice; build water treatment plants with concrete and chemicals, or restore the natural habitats that provided water good enough to drink.
The economics stacked up for nature; and a number of other cities in the Americas are finding the same thing.
But PES projects are not always what they seem.
At the CBD meeting, the Japanese hosts were keen to publicise a scheme blossoming in the district of Toyooka.
The focus of the scheme is the Oriental white stork, a gorgeous-looking black-and-white bird with red legs, standing about a metre high, with a wingspan twice as big.
When industrial agriculture arrived in Toyooka in the decades after World War II, the food that storks need were wiped away in a chemical tide... and the storks took their leave.
"When herbicides were introduced, I saw all the fish in the river floating after the chemicals were used," recalls rice farmer Tsuyoshi Nawate when I meet him at the Toyooka stork breeding and visitors' centre.
"Although the chemicals are now weaker than they were then, I still cannot get rid of that image. I am from this district, and so I am keen to find a way of co-existing with the storks and building an environment that allows storks to live."
Some years ago, farmers, the town council and environmental groups came together to design a project that tempts the birds back by encouraging organic agriculture.
A minority of fields are farmed this way, but enough to provide the food the storks need.
The organic rice is sold at a premium, in sacks that proclaim its "stork-friendly" nature. Bottles of stork-friendly sake, made from the rice, nestle alongside.
The storks are most definitely back. And so, accordingly, are tourists, hundreds of thousands of them streaming into Toyooka each year, providing revenue that is helping restore natural wetlands that provide even better habitat for the birds.
But is this a true PES project?
Talking to Mr Nawate and his fellow farmers, it is clear money is not their only motivation.
"We do it both for the good income, and the nice sight of the storks flying over the paddy fields," he says.
"Looking at storks flying has moved peoples' focus away from just economic aspects to a more environment-friendly way of looking at things."
Hiroe Ishihara from Cambridge University is studying economic and social aspects of stork rehabilitation, and is not convinced.
"I think we should say that farmers are not just involved because of the money issue, because it's really difficult to gain money out of rice production in the current situation in Japan," she says.
"So I think there have to be social or other values that attach to the stork conservation itself - I don't think you can put a price on that."
Money concerns
And that reflects one concern people raise about the PES concept; is it really the most effective way to mobilise support for conservation?
Would it not be better simply to raise interest in nature, in its intrinsic benefits and beauty, and ensure societies protect it for its own sake?
Biodiversity glossary
The counter-argument is that despite decades of conservation, the global picture shows biological diversity declining, with potential tipping-points in sight; so something new has to be attempted.
And more and more governments are at least flirting with PES.
In the EU and US, farmers are rewarded for managing the land in ways that benefit birds, mammals and insects.
Agrochemical and seed company Syngenta is financing training for farmers to help them look after pollinating insects.
Soft-drink companies are funding the preservation of landscapes that ensure the water supply they need.
A fledging market in "biodiversity offsets" is developing, allowing companies to protect nature in one place in recompense for degrading it somewhere else.
These are fledgling steps - but steps they are.
Yet even those people persuaded of the merits of PES do not see it as a complete panacea.
"There's a real danger of under-valuing (ecosystems such as forests)," says Taylor Ricketts.
"If we pick only one or two of these benefits and their economic values and compare them to the value of cut timber, that analysis is not going to go in conservation's favour - we're going to lose the cost-benefit analysis more often than we win it."
And Carlos Manuel Rodriguez cautions that PES on its own cannot be enough - other policies are also needed if natural systems such as forests are to profit, especially enforcing the rule of law and eliminating subsidies that encourage the destruction of biodiversity.
Putting it all together, he says, is a proven package.
"The final outcome - Costa Rica has been able to reverse the rate of deforestation, we have probably twice as much forest as we had 20 years ago," he says.
"That doesn't mean the whole package of biodiversity is coming back - it will take, I don't know, 100, 150 years - but we are setting the base for that, and we see that we can grow, at the same time we can protect nature, enhance nature and use nature as an economic driver."
Revolution road
If governments take the pledge they made at the CBD meeting seriously, then within a decade the world could be embroiled in an economic revolution, where destruction is taxed and conservation rewarded.
The theory holds that citizens will win, through the preservation of environment that is both socially valued and economically valuable.
But at the corporate level, who would win and who would lose?
"In the forestry sector, for example, companies that are able to combine biodiversity conservation, carbon storage and watershed protection with the production of pulp and paper - they will do well," says IUCN's Josh Bishop.
"I suppose that if there are losers, it's those who are not looking ahead - those who are taking for granted existing technologies, existing prices.
"They'll go out of business - and why shouldn't they?"
You can find out more about Payment for Ecosystem Services, and how the concept is being used on four continents, in this week's edition of One Planet on the BBC World Service.
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Was there ever any doubt? | Adele is back at the top of the Official Singles Chart with her monster comeback single Hello.
She's smashed records all over the place, with other artists basically competing for the scraps left in her wake.
Not bad for the singer who only a week ago told Nick Grimshaw: "I feel so sick. I'm so nervous."
So, here are the numbers that put Adele firmly back on top of the music world.
Hello sold a whopping 333,000 in a week
That includes a staggering 259,000 downloads - and makes it the biggest number one single for... well, only three years actually. James Arthur (remember him?) sold 490,000 of his X Factor single Impossible in December 2012.
But streaming was even more mind-bending - 7.32 million plays
That's almost double the previous record held by Justin Bieber's What Do You Mean? which had 3.87 million plays in a week last month.
And the numbers just keep going up and up...
Two people every second were shazaming Hello
That meant a total of 200,000 in the first 24 hours of the song's release - a record for the music recognition app.
Here's a really big one. Her video got 27.7 million views in one day
That worked out as one million views an hour on YouTube in the first two days of it being released.
By the time Adele topped the chart, the video had almost 150 million views
Not that she needs it but why not give those numbers a boost right now...
Watch Adele's new video for Hello here.
Unsurprisingly, Adele's getting a lot of love from the music industry.
"The success of Hello this week underlines what an extraordinary artist Adele is - a once in a generation artist, who appeals to kids, teenagers, mums, dads, aunts, uncles, grandmas and granddads," says Martin Talbot from the Official Charts Company.
One last stat for fact fans: If you don't include X Factor/Pop Idol singles, charity records and Christmas number ones, Hello is second biggest 'regular' number one of the millennium.
It's only beaten by Shaggy's It Wasn't Me, which managed 345,000 sales in a week back in 2001.
Follow @BBCNewsbeat on Twitter, BBCNewsbeat on Instagram, Radio1Newsbeat on YouTube and you can now follow BBC_Newsbeat on Snapchat
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Few people knew what to expect. | Kamal AhmedEconomics editor@bbckamalon Twitter
Would this be belligerent Trump - wagging his finger at the global elite about how divorced they were from reality, from what people really want?
Or would this be conciliatory Trump, setting a different tone? We heard the second.
The president touched many of the World Economic Forum's erogenous zones. But many were not quite sure how to take it considering the pit bull they were expecting.
He talked about the voices of the forgotten - a constant theme here among the "super-haves" who are coming to a creeping realisation that the system has to change if faith in the capitalist system is to endure.
He talked about economic success being about more than the sum of production, it was about the "sum of its citizens".
Businesses, he argued, had to remember their obligations to the people who worked for them.
Critics will pick at the easy holes. For example, on those income tax cuts it's the wealthy who will gain more.
And the business tax cuts are far larger than those for middle-income Americans.
Mr Trump said that America First did not mean America Alone. It was the key line of the speech.
Fair trade, not trade war
And it was a message echoed by other leading members of the White House power pack here, including Gary Cohn, the president's chief economic adviser and head of the US National Economic Council.
This is all about trade and the US approach.
The fear was that America under Mr Trump would throw up a series of trade barriers, increasing protectionism at a time when most government leaders at Davos - Narendra Modi of India, Justin Trudeau of Canada and Emmanuel Macron of France - were preaching the gospel of globalisation.
But today we heard a more nuanced manifesto. America, Mr Trump said, did not want a trade war, it wanted fair trade.
Which may come as a surprise to countries like South Korea, smarting this week following the imposition of tariffs on US imports of solar panels and washing machines.
Mr Trump's argument is this:
The rules of the free trade world were built after the Second World War when America's economic interests were rooted in the successful development of other countries' economies.
These countries then became eager customers for American products.
That equation has changed. China is a much more powerful economy.
The Asian emerging markets, South America and Europe all now have much more muscular dogs in the fight for global trade.
Mr Trump said state planning, intellectual property theft and industrial subsidies were the new weapons of trade wars - and used against America.
"Fair and reciprocal trade" is the new US mantra.
And if the administration feels it does not receive such treatment, the president will act - for example, by passing an executive order pulling the US out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the 12-nation Asian trade deal.
Mutual benefit
It's a message that has not fallen on stony ground here.
"I don't think it's inappropriate that we re-look at some of the treaties that were so asymmetric," Larry Fink, the chief executive of investment company BlackRock, told me.
"Some of these countries now are very strong and very developed. It's going to be a long game.
"The world is benefitting by global trade and we need to find ways of creating more global trade to benefit more humanity worldwide," he said.
America is still a trading nation, one which gains far more economically from globalisation - world trade - than it does from protectionist measures.
And that brute economic truth means that Mr Trump has to play a different tune here - to the business leaders and investors who decide where to place their cash - than maybe to the left-behind voters of the US rust belt.
So the president said that America was ready to do bilateral deals that would be "mutually beneficial".
He even suggested a re-engagement with the TPP. On trade, this was Trump 2.0.
The politics might have been angry in the past, but today, economic reality softened the president.
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It has been a difficult year for Venezuela. | By Irene CaselliBBC News, Caracas
The country faced the absence and death of its divisive president, Hugo Chavez, which resulted in fresh elections, contested results and an economic crisis.
Newly elected President Nicolas Maduro struggled to cope as Mr Chavez's successor, while Venezuelans queued up for milk and toilet paper and were confronted with one of the world's highest inflation rates.
The opposition tried to capitalise on the country's economic woes, hoping to prove that Mr Maduro was an illegitimate leader.
All came to a head on 8 December, when municipal elections were held.
Normally a relatively low-key political event focused on local issues, this month's polls became a face-off to determine which side was stronger.
Official results showed that 54% of the vote went to the government coalition - 10 points more than the opposition coalition, which only got 44%.
This was a surprisingly wide win for the government coalition compared to Mr Maduro's narrow victory of 1.5 percentage points eight months ago.
'Decisive year'
Analysts from both sides of the political spectrum agree that "chavismo" - the distinctive brand of socialism promoted by Mr Chavez - gained important ground.
Though many of the problems that marked 2013 are far from being solved, the results cleared political uncertainty from the air, giving Mr Maduro a chance to catch his breath.
"This has been a decisive year to test Chavez's legacy," says Javier Biardeau, a pro-government sociologist at the Central University of Venezuela.
"The local elections have confirmed that chavismo still has historical viability within Venezuela, and that [Mr] Maduro has been accepted within chavismo."
"The government acquired political time and legitimacy that will help it face the economic challenges ahead," Mr Biardeau told BBC News.
At the same time, the opposition coalition won some of the country's largest cities, such as Caracas, Maracaibo, Merida, Valencia and Barquisimeto.
But it was an overall loss for Henrique Capriles, the leader of the MUD opposition coalition, who had called for this election to be a referendum on Mr Maduro.
This leaves the opposition with many pending questions about its future strategies.
There are no elections until 2015, when Venezuelans will pick new delegates to the National Assembly.
In the meantime, the current members of the National Assembly have little wiggle room, as Mr Maduro was granted special powers to pass laws without the Assembly's previous approval.
The opposition wants to gather signatures for a recall referendum which would ask voters whether they want their president to step down. The constitution says this is only possible after the president's first half term in office, which would be 2016.
It seems that there are few options for the opposition at the moment.
Political analyst John Magdaleno believes the opposition needs to do some soul searching before it can move forward.
"How come the opposition hasn't been able to consolidate itself over these past 14 years?" asks Mr Magdaleno.
"The government went through a terribly challenging situation this year, but the opposition was incapable of taking advantage of the situation with enough energy."
Room for improvement
The MUD coalition is made up of 30 parties with different political views, united mainly by their opposition to chavismo.
They are careful not to discuss their divisions with the press.
"The MUD is a very ample alliance where there are different positions, but we have always managed to agree on common policies," said Ramon Guillermo Aveledo, MUD's executive secretary.
"The coalition is a perfectible instrument, it can be improved, it can be perfected. We are taking the initiative to speed up this process," Mr Aveledo told Venezuela's Union Radio.
Chavismo has the advantage of having access to the government's resources for spreading its message during the campaign, including the president's daily radio and TV broadcasts.
But while the opposition came close to a victory in April's presidential elections, they had lost momentum by December.
Mr Magdaleno believes that the reason for the opposition's losses are to be found within the opposition itself.
"There is a problem with their discourse," he says, explaining that the opposition is not proposing real change.
"They have been stuck in a spiral of elections, but they need to engage with real politics now."
'A new phase'
December's results were also a victory for Mr Maduro because he managed to change a negative trend in public opinion.
Annual inflation had risen to 54.3% in the final months of the year, becoming one of the highest in the world. In the meantime, food shortages, power outages and a staggering black market exchange rate became daily worries.
The government's economic measures were not popular with the public.
But then in November, Mr Maduro launched a strong offensive against what he called "unscrupulous businessmen". He occupied electronics stores, forcing them to slash prices, just after handing out Christmas bonuses to all government workers.
"These measures had a successful propaganda effect," says Mr Biardeau.
"Maduro was put to the test and he passed it, while building his own profile."
Mr Maduro has held victory speeches since 8 December, saying the municipal elections was a watershed.
"These elections close a cycle and now a new phase starts in our country. We closed a difficult and complex cycle that lasted 14 months," he said.
There are some big challenges ahead for Mr Maduro, especially when it comes to the economy.
But at least, for now, he has proven that there is a chavismo after Chavez and that it is stronger than what the opposition is currently offering.
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Who are the poor in India? | Soutik BiswasDelhi correspondent
The fact is nobody quite knows. There are various estimates on the exact number of poor in India, and the counts have been mired in controversy.
This week the Planning Commission said 29.8% of India's 1.21 billion people live below the poverty line, a sharp drop from 37.2% in 2004-2005. (This means means around 360 million people currently live in poverty.) But one estimate suggests this figure could be as high as 77%.
The problem, believe many, is that the new count is based on fixing the poverty line for a person living on 28.65 rupees (56 cents/35p) a day in cities and 22.42 rupees (44 cents/33p) a day in villages.
This was lower than last year's recommendation by the Planning Commission to set the poverty line at 32 rupees (65c/40p) a day which stirred up a major debate across the country.
Last year activists dared the head of the country's planning body to live on half a dollar a day to test his claim that it represented an adequate sum to survive in a country with high inflation and leaky and shambolic social benefits. They concluded that the claim appeared to be grossly unfair and scandalous.
In India, poverty counts are based on a large sample survey of household expenditures. In other words, they are based on the purchasing power needed to buy food with some margin for non-food consumption needs.
The fresh decline in poverty - rural poverty has declined faster than urban poverty during the latest period under review - has been attributed to the government's increased spending on rural welfare programmes. If this is true, it is good news.
But whatever the figure is, the number of poor in India remains staggeringly high. And, what is more worrisome, demographics and the social character of the poor do not appear to be changing.
Labourers (farm workers in villages, casual workers in cities), tribespeople, Dalits (formerly called low caste untouchables) and Muslims remain the poorest Indians.
Almost 60% of the poor continue to reside in Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand. Significantly, 85% of India's tribespeople and Dalits live in these states.
Most agree that India has reduced poverty - from 55% in 1973-74 to 29.8% in 2009-2010, if the recent figures are correct.
But it is not happening fast enough, considering India's reasonably high rate of economic growth. "High growth, though essential," says the India Development Report, "is not sufficient for poverty reduction on a sustainable basis."
If the demographics and social character of the poorest in India is not changing rapidly, what is wrong?
Economists like Arvind Virmani believe that bad governance, misplaced priorities, unchecked corruption and a huge failure in improving the quality of public health and literacy are to blame. All of this is correct. More importantly, does all this happen because the Indian state is inherently anti-poor?
PS: The government's flip-flop over poverty count continues. On Thursday, PM Manmohan Singh told reporters that a "fresh [technical] group has been set up to devise a new method to assess the number of poor". Minister for Planning Ashwani Kumar echoed the sentiment saying there was a need to "revisit" the methods of counting the poor which would be "consistent with current reality". So yes, we still don't know who are the poor in India.
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Subsets and Splits