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Campaigners trying to reopen Aberdeen's Bon Accord baths have expressed delight and relief at its condition after getting inside the building to see it. | The swimming pool on Justice Mill Lane closed in 2008 because of council budget cuts.
It is estimated more than £5m will be needed to refurbish the historic art deco design building.
The campaigners are nearing a £5,000 total to start a Save Bon Accord Baths fund.
Fundraising manager John Law told BBC Scotland: "It was great to get into the baths, I have to say first impressions were incredible.
"It's an amazing place, and it's in much better condition than we first thought it would likely be.
"The main structure seems to be in really good condition."
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The 33 miners trapped deep underground in northern Chile for more than two months have now been rescued.
| Omar Reygadas was the seventeenth to be freed in an operation that drew the world's attention. Mr Reygadas, 56 is a heavy equipment operator who has been a miner all his working life.
His children Omar, Ximena and Marcela kept a diary for the BBC, describing their long wait to see their father again.
Read September's entries
15 OCTOBER
Omar: I just left the hospital and I'm waiting to hear if my Dad will be discharged today.
He had an operation because he had some problems with his teeth. The doctors need to do some checks to determine if he can go home.
The first thing my Dad wants to do is to spend some time with his family at home. Then he will go to church.
His mood is good - but he is quiet and anxious because he is waiting to be discharged.
Our lives - the lives of the miners' families - have changed since the accident. My father and the other 32 have suffered and they continue to experience major changes.
For example I have never been interviewed before. I've worked with the media but I had always been behind the camera, not in front of it. But, because of the accident, I have been interviewed several times.
'Centre of global attention'
It's amazing to think how this story has travelled beyond the borders of Chile.
I think all the miners, including my father, will sooner or later have to face their new reality. They will have to speak to the press. They are the centre of global attention.
Once they go out they will read everything that has been published, what the media have being saying about them. Journalists from around the world are waiting to interview them and ask what happened during those 69 days, how they managed to stay alive.
It's only then that they will realise the magnitude of what happened. We, the family, we've already lived through that.
They know things will not be quiet for a while.
But the priority of the 33 is to spend time with their family and loved ones, to rest and, in my Dad's case, have the necessary medical treatment.
My Dad knows that the media have been covering the story. He is aware that the press will follow what happens to him and the other 32 miners.
I think he'll handle the situation well. He is a very sociable man, very friendly. He likes to talk, I think he'll take it in his stride.
'I cried and he wept'
I was chosen to be the first to greet my Dad after he climbed out of the capsule.
It was awesome when they opened the capsule. I was really touched to just see him there. He was whiter and a little thinner than I remembered.
I was moved when I hugged him. I cried a little and he wept. He knelt down to thank the Lord.
I told him I loved him very much and did not say anything else. I was so excited.
What struck me most was the faith of each miner that came to the surface.
My Dad is a believer and he came out with a much stronger faith in God because he was given another chance at life.
For me the main lesson is that God does exist - and he took pity on the miners and their families.
There are miners who were not believers and now believe in God.
Another lesson is that you have to spend more time with your family.
Thanks to the BBC for your coverage, for having reached out to us, for speaking to us. It was a beautiful experience to have met you.
14 OCTOBER
Ximena: After emerging from the mine where he was trapped for 69 days along with his 32 fellow workers, my dad told me that at one point he thought they would not be rescued.
As soon as I saw him, I hugged and kissed him and took photos of him. The reunion was so wonderful, just huge!
My brother Omar had been nominated to receive him once he emerged from the capsule. My sister Marcela and I were waiting in the rest area.
When he saw me, he said: "Don't cry, don't cry, just be calm, because I'm calm."
In himself, he's just the same as ever, but physically he's different - a lot thinner and very pale. He's normally quite dark-skinned, but at the moment he looks like Casper, he's so pale!
In general, he's in good spirits. But then when he remembers the first few days after the accident, he starts crying, he gets very upset.
But then he pulls himself together and his spirits are high once more.
'While sleeping'
My dad never imagined that an accident like this would ever happen to him. He told me that during the first few days down that mine, he thought they would never get them out.
During those dark moments he prayed to God and asked him that if he was going to take him, then please would he do it while he was sleeping, so he wouldn't suffer, wouldn't have to live through a landslide.
What little food they had, they eked it out as long as they could. They ate very little. They had some tuna fish which they ate using a teaspoon.
He thought that once the rations were finished or when they gave up trying to find them, they would die down there.
He thought he would die there in the mine because he never imagined there were so many people, so much equipment and even big companies, trying to help them.
When he told me all this, he started to cry a bit. He thought they'd been abandoned and the mining company wasn't going to help them.
'Thank you'
But he began to have real hope when he heard the machinery up above, obviously trying to locate them. That's when he realised they would get them out.
He told me he thought about us all the time and missed us terribly, but he did think he wouldn't see us again.
I was surprised when he said he would not work again. I don't really believe him.
If he wants to eat a nice roast with salad and rice, then that's what we'll prepare for him.
From the bottom of my heart, I thank all those people who were there for us, as families, as a nation. I thank them all for being with us. Let's hope nothing like this ever happens again anywhere in the world.
It's just so painful.
13 OCTOBER
Marcela: When my dad was rescued I remembered my mother - who passed away eight years ago. This is a moment I would have loved to share with her. It would have been very different if she were here with us.
We are now waiting to see my dad, to share a moment and have a chat. Then he will be sent to the hospital in Copiapo for a couple of days before he can finally come home.
Then we will decide how we will celebrate.
My brother was chosen to greet him. We saw him on a screen at the camp. We all hugged each other and screamed of joy - it was a beautiful experience.
He looked well. The doctors will determine how good his health really is, but I thought he looked well. He did look a bit pale after spending such a long time below ground.
My brother didn't have a special message for him, but gave him a flag of Colo Colo - his football team. That's the only thing we could do at this time.
We didn't meet the president because he had left for the hospital with Bolivian President Evo Morales. My brother spent some time with the first lady and he even filmed her on his video camera. She also met us at the cafeteria.
We just want to thank the whole world for this.
12 OCTOBER
Omar: We are feeling a mixture of optimism and nerves.
Anxious as we are, we know we have to remain calm for the big moment when my dad is released.
I will be the one who will greet my dad once he is outside. I will wait for him by the tunnel that was drilled to get through to them.
So I will be the first person he sees when the capsule is opened.
I have so many things to tell him... that I love him, that I miss him… But maybe it's better to leave it to the moment and see what words come to me.
Maybe I won't say anything to him. Maybe I'll just hug him and no words will come out of me.
All I want is to have him in front of me. After all that time and all that suffering when we didn't know what had happened to him, it will be the most beautiful and wonderful thing.
I have felt well treated by the press. The journalists are just doing their job.
They are here because this is a historical event, something that has captured the world's attention.
This is why I try to answer all their questions. I also work in the media, in fact.
11 OCTOBER
Ximena: My dad is anxious, he knows that it's almost time to go out and is happy, very happy, because he misses us a lot down there.
Over the weekend we told him that he has become a great granddad again. My older daughter just had a baby. He was very happy as he had seen my daughter and she had shown him her bump.
We are now going to stay at the camp until the 33 of them are out. I have a week's leave at work so that I can wait for my father and stay with him in hospital.
My brother Omar will wait for him at the capsule's exit. Me and my sister Marcela will stay in a special room which was set up for the relatives.
From there, he will join the other miners and wait until the last one is out. Then they will all go to hospital together.
The miners decided to wait together. Apparently, there were plans to send them to Copiapo in groups of four, but they refused.
I think the miners have been very united - and it's not just about their life down in the tunnel and the wait here for the last one, it's also about all the paperwork they need to do so that they all get the same pay.
There is no established order for getting out. The paramedic will decide. My dad had a sight problem, but he is now fine.
He says that he will give his place to a younger miner, but what matters is that they all go out and that they have no problems along the way.
The anxiety is killing me. I will try to do all I can on these days so that I can avoid crying when they rescue him. I want to be well when I see him and hug him.
I plan to be calm, but we'll just have to wait and see what happens when the moment comes.
After that, we'll have plenty of time to organise a barbecue and finally give him the steak and avocado that he always asks for.
8 OCTOBER
Omar: They are saying the rescue is near. I convince myself that everything will be fine.
We trust the rescue team entirely, but we are worried about the force of nature. We fear a landslide that could hamper the operation.
We don't want our relatives to be in danger on the way to the surface. We are waiting for the team to make a decision to encase the tunnel or not.
As a family, our position is that they should encase the tunnel. We want our relatives to come out safe and calm.
We don't want the decision to be rushed. If the president is not here by the time they get rescued, so be it.
The rescue workers are the ones doing the job and security is what matters - for the miners inside and for the people outside.
Our other worry is about how they get out. The miners with the best health will go first [when dangers are thought to be highest].
We want to see our father soon, but we don't want him to be one of the first ones because of the risk this implies.
Our whole family will be sleeping in Camp Hope during the weekend. We want to see my dad soon.
We want to find out how he is and then start planning for a barbecue and a party.
4 OCTOBER
Marcela: I spoke to my dad last weekend. He seemed happy and was in a better mood than at other times.
I think he knows the rescue is near and that he will be with us soon.
We can now talk to him every weekend, so we do whatever we can to be here when that happens.
We only have eight minutes for the four of us, and it's very difficult to say so many things in such a short time. So we tell him that we love him and we miss him, and try to cheer him up.
Generally, we try not to talk too much about the rescue, just like the psychologist recommended. We tell him only what's necessary, so we only told him that it would happen soon.
We are very happy the rescue might happen in just a few days. But we are a bit worried about my dad's health.
The government and the rescue workers are prepared to receive them, but we haven't prepared anything because we don't know what his health condition will be.
We do know that as soon as he gets out he will go straight to the hospital in Copiapo so that they can run some medical tests.
What we do after he gets rescued will also depend on his mood and what the psychologists say. So we don't have any plans to hold a party yet.
We do know that when the rescue operations start we will all stay at the camp to wait for him. We will have to sort out permission from work.
This sad experience has helped my family to be even more united. We now appreciate the small things in life, like the neighbour or friend who offers help or some words of encouragement. We have also remembered that God is here with us.
Read September's entries
Translated from Spanish interviews by BBC Mundo. You can read the original text in Spanish here.
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Abu Sayyaf is one of the smallest and most violent jihadist groups in the southern Philippines. Its name means "bearer of the sword" and it is notorious for kidnapping for ransom, and for attacks on civilians and the army. | In 2004 it bombed a ferry in Manila Bay, killing 116 people.
In the last year it has taken several people hostage - Malaysian and Indonesian workers, Western tourists and one Filipina among them. Three groups of Indonesians and Malaysians were released earlier in 2016, but two Canadians, Robert Hall and John Ridsdel, were killed after the Canadian government refused to pay the ransom demanded for them.
What does it want?
Abu Sayyaf has its roots in the separatist insurgency in the southern Philippines, an impoverished region where Muslims make up a majority of the population in contrast to the rest of the country, which is mainly Roman Catholic.
It broke from the broader Moro National Liberation Front in 1991 because it disagreed with the MNLF's policy of pursuing autonomy and wanted to establish an independent Islamic state.
Its founder, Abdurajak Abubakar Janjalani, was an Islamic preacher who fought in the Soviet-Afghan war, where he is said to have met Osama Bin Laden and been inspired by him. Al-Qaeda provided the group with funding and training when it was initially set up.
After Janjalani died, the group split into two main networks whose leaders were then killed in 2006 to 2007. Since then, Abu Sayyaf has operated as a collection of factions that work with each other through kinship or personal ties but which also occasionally compete against each other.
The beheading of a Malaysian hostage, Bernard Then, in 2015, for example, is reported to have resulted from a breakdown in negotiations as one of the two factions holding him wanted more money than was demanded, and different parties involved in the negotiations all sought a share of the ransom.
The group is believed to have an estimated 400 members and, since 2014, several of its factions have declared their allegiance to the Islamic State (IS) group. Isnilon Tontoni Hapilon, one of Abu Sayyaf's most prominent leaders, has been recognised as the leader of all IS-aligned groups in the Philippines.
Filipino authorities have characterised the pledges as opportunistic attempts to obtain funds from IS. But IS has recognised some pledges and its de facto news agency, A'maq, has reported two recent major clashes between Philippine armed forces and militant groups, adding to the likelihood of a relationship between them.
How dangerous is the group?
Abu Sayyaf's hostages tend to be released if the ransom demanded for them is paid. This has been the outcome for most of their hostages. The group is known to kill captives if its demands are not met.
Its recent kidnap of 18 Indonesians and Malaysians has also prompted fears of the maritime region becoming a "new Somalia", as Indonesia's chief security minister put it, which could disrupt regional trade.
The Kuala Lumpur-based Piracy Reporting Centre has warned ships to stay clear of small suspicious vessels in the area and Indonesia and Malaysia have proposed joint patrols in the Sulu Sea to prevent further incidents.
There are also fears that the group could be supporting terrorist activities by other IS-linked groups in the region. Investigators looking into the Jakarta attack in January said the weapons used in it had come from the southern Philippines.
While there is no evidence that Abu Sayyaf was involved in this, the group has long had ties to prominent Indonesian militant groups like Mujahidin Indonesia Timur and Jemaah Islamiyah (JI). Several JI members involved in the Bali bombings found shelter with the group after fleeing Indonesia.
There is also evidence it has links to jihadist groups in the Middle East. Recently the body of a Moroccan bomb expert, Mohammad Khattab, was discovered following a battle between the group and the Philippine army.
What is the Philippine government doing about it?
The Philippine army and police have been hunting the group in an attempt to defeat it and rescue its hostages for several months. A clash in early April between the army and the group resulted in 18 soldiers dead and 56 wounded, the army's worst casualties in a year. The presidential office has said that Abu Sayyaf is "on the run" but fighting hard.
It is not clear what approach incoming President Rodrigo Duterte will adopt once he takes office from 30 June. On one hand he has threatened to invade Jolo if the kidnappers holding two remaining hostages - Norwegian Kjartan Sekkingstad and Filipina Marites Flor - do not surrender. On the other he has indicated he is willing to negotiate with them, saying "we don't go to war with our own people".
Some observers argue that the roots of Abu Sayyaf lie in the economic and political disparities between the south and other parts of the country. "As long as Muslims continue to be oppressed, there will always be Abu Sayyaf," the vice-chairman of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, Ghazali Jaafar, has said.
BBC Monitoring reports and analyses news from TV, radio, web and print media around the world. You can follow BBC Monitoring on Twitter and Facebook.
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When Jaskirat Singh Sidhu ran a stop sign and crashed into a bus carrying a Canadian hockey team, he caused an accident that took 16 lives and left 13 more people seriously injured. A year later, the father of one of his victims reflects on the meaning of forgiveness. | By Robin Levinson-KingBBC News, Toronto
Scott Thomas has told this story countless times.
How he was riding in the car with Cal Hobbs, another hockey dad, on the way to the Humboldt Broncos' game against the Nipawin Hawks on 6 April 2018.
How Hobbs's son Declan, the goalie for the Hawks, called his father just hours before the puck was set to drop.
How Declan, on speakerphone, said, "Don't bother coming: the game's cancelled. There's been a bad bus accident," before breaking down in tears.
How they drove to the crash site in silence, save for the blare of the ambulance sirens and the whir of helicopters overhead.
"I just got this impending feeling of doom," Thomas told the BBC, in an interview almost a year after the accident.
Thomas's son Evan was killed, along with 15 others, when a semi-trailer driven by Jaskirat Singh Sidhu crashed into the bus carrying the Broncos team and staff.
Thirteen others were injured, some permanently.
On Friday, Sidhu was sentenced to eight years in prison after pleading guilty to 29 charges of dangerous driving, causing death and bodily harm.
He was not speeding, intoxicated or on his cellphone when he ran through a flashing stop sign at the intersection, colliding with the front half of the bus. He had been on the job one month.
The 29-year-old man grew up on a farm in India and moved to Canada in 2013, where he became a permanent resident, according to the CBC.
He could face deportation.
"I take full responsibility for what has happened," he told the victims' families when he pleaded guilty in January.
"It happened because of my lack of experience, and I am so, so, so, so sorry."
During his sentencing hearing, family members described a range of feelings towards the man responsible for so many deaths.
"I despise you for taking my baby away from me," Andrea Joseph told the court through anguished sobs. "You don't deserve my forgiveness. You shouldn't have been driving."
Others offered forgiveness, including the wife of the team's coach, who also perished.
"I want to tell you I forgive you," Christina Haugan said. "I have been forgiven for things when I didn't deserve it, so I will do the same."
Despite these conflicting feelings, Thomas says the extended victims of the crash have formed their own kind of "family", and they talk nearly every day on WhatsApp or online.
Until now, Thomas - who met Sidhu privately in January - has preferred to keep his own feelings to himself. He is concerned that if he reveals too much about what happened in their intense, brief encounter, it could persuade the judge one way or another and alienate members of the "family".
Now that Sidhu's sentence has been handed down, Thomas feels it is ok to open up about what he calls "the most amazing experience" of his life.
"My shirt was wet with his tears," he says.
Although he is not religious, Thomas says he has always been spiritual. The violence of the crash and the randomness of its devastation have in some ways been a relief, answering questions he says he has long pondered about tragedies in the world.
"There's no way God was responsible for this. There's no way karma was kicking me in the ass for being a bad guy," he says.
"Probably the deepest feeling I've had, since all of this started, is a feeling of resignation. I mean, what can you do? There's nothing you can do about this: it just punches you in the face. I can scream and yell all I want but it's not bringing him back."
But when it comes to the subject of forgiveness, Thomas needs to pause.
"There's not a goddamn thing I can do about this, so what else am I supposed to do?" he says.
"I feel horribly for Mr Sidhu, I really do. I feel horribly for everyone involved in this. So have I forgiven him? Yeah, what other option do I have? I don't think I have another option in order to maintain my own sanity."
Moving on
The Humboldt tragedy hit close to home for many in Canada, a country where hockey is more of an identity than a pastime.
To this day, Thomas still gets letters and poems from Canadians who sympathise with his loss.
He says having so much support has been wonderful, but grieving in public is not always easy. It is almost impossible to avoid images of the crash, or to find a quiet moment amidst the frequent media requests.
"I find a lot of emptiness in my life right now. Evan's the first thing I think about when I get up in the morning. He's the last thing I think about at night when I go to bed," he says.
"It's usually the first word on my mind when I find myself driving anywhere. It's confusing - we're trying to find a way to celebrate his life, but it's hard to not get hooked up on how he died, and the last few moments of his life."
Evan began skating almost as soon as he could walk, says Thomas, who played junior hockey himself when he was in his teens, retiring from the sport in 1993.
As a child, Evan would watch his father play pickup games with friends, and practised his shooting in the basement.
By the time he was a young teen, Thomas says he knew his son had the talent to make it to the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League, a semi-professional hockey league.
He was never the best athlete in their hometown of Saskatoon, Thomas says fondly, but he was one of the best.
"It was pretty clear to us that Evan had an opportunity to excel in athletics, and in school too. He was just the kind of kid whom things came naturally to," he says.
Before Evan graduated high school, he won the school's science award for achieving top marks.
He wanted to go to university, and had talked about becoming an astronaut or an orthopaedic surgeon. Thomas used to catch his son watching the popular medical drama Grey's Anatomy with his mother.
Thomas didn't see the appeal of the TV show, which is heavy on romance and melodramatics,
"I used to bug him: 'Why the hell are you watching that?'" he recalls.
"Dad, I'm just watching it for the surgery,'" Evan explained.
'He's a broken man'
One thing that has kept Thomas and his wife going is their campaign for reforms in the trucking industry. The owner of the trucking company that employed Sidhu is facing several charges related to non-compliance with safety regulations.
Along with other parents of victims, the couple has drafted a petition calling on the federal government to better regulate commercial trucking. Petition E-2005 has garnered almost 5,000 signatures and they hope to introduce it to parliament.
Thomas says ultimately, he blames the trucking company and relaxed government regulations for his son's death, more than he blames Sidhu himself.
"Have I forgiven him? Yeah, I would say I have. He's a broken man, he did not intend this outcome, he was taken advantage of by the system that put him there."
After their meeting, Thomas left his mobile phone number with one of Sidhu's family members, should he ever need someone to talk to.
"I wouldn't give you my cellphone number if I didn't want you to use it," he told him.
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McFly have announced that they will play two special shows at London's Royal Albert Hall this September to celebrate their 10th anniversary. | The band will perform their biggest hits and be joined by some special guests.
The shows, on 19 and 20 September, follow their sold out Best Of McFly tour.
Tom Fletcher, Danny Jones, Dougie Poynter and Harry Judd have recently played 20 venues across the UK.
Their greatest hits album, Memory Lane, was released last November and features singles including All About You, Shine a Light and Obviously.
McFly have seven number one singles and 10 million album sales to their name.
The band also played in the US last year with sell-out shows in New York and Los Angeles.
Follow @BBCNewsbeat on Twitter
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A suspected link between abnormal breast growth in young boys and the use of lavender and tea tree oils has been given new weight, after a study found eight chemicals contained in the oils interfere with hormones. | Gynaecomastia is rare, and there is often no obvious cause.
But there have been a number of cases linked to use of these essential oils.
The American study found that key chemicals in the oils boost oestrogen and inhibit testosterone.
Not everyone will have the same reaction to an essential oil.
The plant-derived oils are found in a number of products such as soaps, lotions, shampoos and hair-styling products. They're also popular as alternative cleaning products and medical treatments.
Lead researcher J. Tyler Ramsey from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), in North Carolina, suggested caution when using the oils.
"Our society deems essential oils as safe. However, they possess a diverse amount of chemicals and should be used with caution because some of these chemicals are potential endocrine disruptors."
A growing number of reported cases of male gynaecomastia have coincided with topical exposure to the oils.
After they stopped using the products, the symptoms subsided.
A previous study by Dr Kenneth Korach - who was also co-investigator for this study - found that lavender and tea tree oil had properties that competed with or hindered the hormones that control male characteristics, which could affect puberty and growth.
The new study looked at eight key chemicals from the hundreds that make up the oils. Four of the tested chemicals appear in both oils and the others were in either oil.
They were tested on human cancer cells in the laboratory to measure the changes.
The researchers found all eight demonstrated varying degrees of promoting oestrogen and/or inhibiting testosterone properties.
"Lavender oil and tea tree oil pose potential environmental health concerns and should be investigated further," said Mr Ramsey.
Many of the chemicals tested appear in at least 65 other essential oils, which is of concern, he added.
Essential oil guidelines
Prof Ieuan Hughes, emeritus professor of paediatrics at the University of Cambridge said the findings "have confirmed why an individual using such oils containing these chemicals may develop breast tissue".
"The anti-male hormone effects are rather unexpected and it is not possible to comment further without the data.
"Of course, not everyone exposing themselves to such oils has adverse effects, so it is possible there are particular individuals who may be more sensitive to the effects of the chemicals, or perhaps are using the products in excess.
He said attention should be given to better regulation of these products.
Prof Hughes added: "Clearly, the longer-term effects of such exposure are unknown."
Dr Rod Mitchell, honorary consultant paediatric endocrinologist at the Queens Medical Research Institute in Edinburgh said the study "is important in establishing a possible mechanism for the suggested link between gynaecomastia and exposure to lavender and tea tree oils".
"However, there are important factors that must be taken into account when interpreting these results. The tests are conducted in cancer cells, which may not represent the situation in normal breast tissue.
"The concentration (dose) to which the cells are exposed may not be equivalent to exposure in humans. There is a complex relationship between oestrogen, testosterone and other hormones in the body, that cannot be replicated in these experiments."
He called for further larger studies.
"At present, there is insufficient evidence to support the concept that exposure to lavender and tea tree oil containing products cause gynaecomastia in children, and further epidemiological and experimental studies are required."
The study results will be presented on 19 March at the Endocrine Society's annual meeting in Chicago.
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It seems there are few jobs robots can't do these days, even the most delicate jobs, like picking asparagus or potting plant seedlings. But they're only needed because humans can't - or won't - do the work, farmers say. | By Jen CopestakeBBC Click, the Netherlands
Marc Vermeer had a problem. He was struggling to attract workers to pick his white asparagus crop in the Netherlands.
The workers he did hire moved on quickly, so he was always training new people.
White asparagus needs to be picked at a particular moment while it is still under the ground, otherwise it turns green.
It is often difficult to detect and can be damaged easily.
So in 2000, fed up with his situation, Marc challenged his inventor brother Ad to make a robot to replace human workers.
Ad had been designing intricate machines for decades in the semi-conductor industry. They came up with some ideas to try, but nothing worked.
Fourteen years later and facing increasing labour problems, Marc insisted that Ad should now be able to come up with a machine that could "see" deep into the ground to pluck out the asparagus as well as a human.
This time Ad saw a way forward using new technology.
"Selective harvesting is really complex, you need hi-tech sensors, you need electronics, you need robotics," he says.
"But these complex hi-tech machines get more and more feasible to develop because technology is improving."
Along with Ad's wife, Therese van Vinken, an expert on securing financial funding, they founded robotic start-up Cerescon.
"Marc knew the asparagus farmers and he had experience with sales," Ms van Vinken says.
"The deal was Marc does the commercial part, Ad does the development, and Therese takes care of the money."
But the day after celebrating the company's legal incorporation on 11 December 2014, tragedy struck.
Marc, a 51-year-old father of three, suddenly became ill with meningitis. He was placed in an artificial coma for several days.
"One of the first things that his wife Anita said to us was that when Marc was out of the coma he was constantly talking about that machine," Ms van Vinken says.
But Marc never lived to see the robot working in his field. He suffered a cerebral haemorrhage after leaving intensive care and died within 10 minutes.
In shock, and with no idea about the farming side of the business, Therese and Ad thought about giving up.
"Especially in the beginning there were many moments I thought: well forget it, no way," Ms van Vinken says.
But with hundreds of thousands of euros in subsidies already spent, they knew they had to push forward.
Today, they have sold their first commercial machine to a farmer in France. The three-row version can replace 70 to 80 human pickers.
"It's the first selective harvesting machine ever on the market," says Ad Vermeer.
"I'm sure it's going to be the first one of a new kind, and there's going to be lots of different selective harvesting machines in the future."
To "see" the asparagus, the robot injects an electrical signal into the ground. Sensors dig through the soil and pick up the signal the closer they get to the asparagus.
"The asparagus is actually conducting the signal electrically because there is a lot of water in there," he says.
"Basically, the difference between the water content of the asparagus and the sand, that makes the difference to how we detect the asparagus."
Cerescon's robot is one of many machines being developed around the world to replace delicate farming jobs.
"Over the years, we have seen many tasks become feasible to be taken over by robots," says Rick van de Zedde of Wageningen University in the Netherlands, where teams are researching autonomous solutions for jobs up and down the fruit and vegetable supply chain.
"If you look at the way the current agri-food production is developing there is a scarcity of labour, but also a lack of motivated or skilled people," says Mr van de Zedde.
The problem is that many of the jobs are "repetitive and pretty dull", he says, but still require deft handling when dealing with fragile seedlings and flowers.
But even here, robots are learning to adopt a gentle touch.
The factory floor at Florensis, one of the Netherlands' largest flower suppliers, is whirring with the sound of robots hard at work.
Sticking cuttings into tiny soil pots needs to be done very gently, and is traditionally humans' work.
Indeed, there is a line of tables manned by humans, but there are also six autonomous machines on the other side of the warehouse.
These machines can plant up to 2,600 cuttings an hour. A skilled human can manage 1,400 to 2,000. And the machine does not tire, rarely breaks down, and plants the cuttings to the same depth every time.
"Due to the fact there is a lack of labour it forces us to look for alternatives that will enforce development," says Marck Strik, director of product development at Florensis.
The robot works out which end of the cutting is a leaf and which is a stem with the help of image-recognition cameras, and will even shake the conveyor belt to get a better look.
More Technology of Business
"Everybody has been searching for this breakthrough in the industry and we feel that this is one of those breakthroughs that really has an exponential possibility," says Mr Strik.
"At the end of the game, you can work 24 hours a day and save, let's say, 60% of your labour costs," he says.
"I believe - and I am convinced - that this is just the start and absolutely this will replace the human being."
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The government says it needs to find a further £12bn in savings from the annual welfare bill to meet its goal of balancing the books by 2017-8.
| Chancellor George Osborne is expected to spell out details of what will be cut in next month's Budget and the spending review later this year in the face of calls from opposition parties and anti-austerity campaigners for greater clarity on the issue.
The welfare budget currently accounts for about 30% of all government spending. Here are more details about where the money goes.
The welfare budget and where it is spent
What has already been announced and what is left to be done?
What has been ruled out?
What are some of the options?
Source: Institute for Fiscal Studies
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A major conference in London is considering how to protect Africa's wildlife, including rhinos and elephants, from an unprecedented surge in illegal trafficking. Conservationists warn that the growth in the illegal ivory trade means elephants could be wiped out in parts of Africa in the next few years. As demand from China pushes levels of poaching and smuggling to new highs, we investigate China's illegal ivory traders. | Damian GrammaticasChina correspondent
In a nondescript shopping mall in Beijing sellers offering antiques and artworks are crammed together. The shops are piled high with stone carvings, jade and ivory. Some have whole elephant tusks on display, others ivory figures, statues and intricately worked scenes.
As soon as we enter one shop with cabinet after cabinet of carvings, the owner gets tense and defensive. "We have a licence. We have a legal licence to sell ivory. It's hanging there," he says pointing to the wall.
China has around 150 legal, government-licensed ivory shops. This is one of them. They are the only places allowed to sell ivory to individual buyers. The government says ivory carving is an ancient art it wants to keep alive.
Chinese consumers, increasingly wealthy, desire ivory. Some think it is lucky, while for some it is a way to display their status. Others see it as a good investment and many give ivory as a gift or bribe to win favour with an official or business contact. It is certainly good business.
"I've been in this business more than 40 years. I don't get involved in anything illegal," says the shopkeeper. When we ask why he's so worried, he says: "There are illegal shops. But it's a case of 'one rotten egg spoiling the whole soup'."
China's government was given permission to import one consignment of more than 60 tonnes of ivory from Africa six years ago. Pieces carved from that legal stockpile can be sold in China as long as they have a driving-licence-sized photo identification.
But when we look closely at the pictures on the photo IDs in the shop we are in, the images do not quite match the carvings on sale. When we ask about the discrepancy the shopkeeper tells us it is time to leave.
"It's just a matter of the angle the picture is taken from. You shouldn't make a fuss about it," he says, adding: "I'm off. I'm closing now. I told you. It's an angle problem."
It is a common scam. Reusing old IDs to sell new pieces of ivory can be a way of laundering ivory that is not from the legal stockpile but illegal, smuggled into China.
Cracking down
Last month Chinese customs officers destroyed six tonnes of seized ivory. It was a signal that China is trying to tackle the problem.
Watching the event, John Scanlon, secretary general of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites), the body regulating the international trade in endangered species, told reporters Africa's elephants were increasingly threatened.
"In 2011, we had 25,000 elephants illegally killed on the African continent. Last year, it was 22,000. So that was almost 50,000 elephants illegally killed for their ivory in just two years. This is decimating the African elephant population and we will soon see local extinctions in some areas, in particular within Central Africa."
To evade the current crackdown China's ivory traders are moving online. Selling ivory on the internet is illegal and major websites have banned it. But on sites specialising in auctions, antiques and collectables it is easy to find dozens of photos of ivory pieces for sale.
We made contact with one trader. He met us in a Beijing hotel.
"People I know who specialise in this trade are already in jail. This business is banned in China," he said.
"We have a new police chief in Beijing. They have started to monitor it very strictly."
He told us it was getting harder to import and move ivory. Taking it on trains or even the subway was impossible as all bags had to go through airport-style security. Sending it by courier was risky too, he said, and even ivory being moved in bags on public buses had been seized.
Rising prices
Once he was convinced we were genuine buyers he produced a large tusk.
He said it was smuggled ivory, 57cm (22 inches) long, weighing 2.7kg (6 pounds), the asking price 77,000 Chinese yuan ($12,700; £7,600).
The trader insisted this was some of the best quality ivory available, taken from an elephant not long after it had been killed, and carved with mythical figures.
"Here on top there's a phoenix, here a dragon," he said. "There are different types of ivory, white, yellow and blood ivory. This is close to blood ivory. It's the best."
And, he added, the crackdowns themselves are pushing up the price of ivory, making it even more attractive to investors and more profitable for sellers.
"There are lots of ivory collectors. But there's less and less ivory available. So the price is shooting up every day," our seller told us.
He left with his tusk and has since been in contact, apparently keen to make a sale.
Demand from China is a major factor in the surge in poaching and smuggling.
Some believe the answer is a total ban on ivory sales. China does not want that.
But while the buying goes on, so does the killing, pushing elephants in parts of Africa towards extinction.
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Liz McLucas is finally looking forward to the future. | By Lesley-Anne McKeownBBC News NI
She is is due to become a grandmother for the first time this summer.
After a hip replacement last month, the County Down woman is pain-free for the first time in over two years.
But her road to recovery has come at a cost - €12,500 (£10,800) to be precise - with the decision to pay for private surgery almost as agonising as the chronic pain that confined her to bed for much of the past 12 months.
"I had to borrow the money off my sons," she told BBC News NI.
"What mother wants to turn round and ask her children for money?
"They offered, but to accept money from your children - you don't do that - it's the mother who gives money to the kids not the kids who give money to the mother," she said.
"I had absolutely no option," she added.
'I had no life left'
"If I hadn't had that operation I don't think I'd be talking to you today because I could not have carried on the way things were.
"My whole life was just basically gone - I had no life left," she said.
Like thousands of others in Northern Ireland, Ms McLucas has spent more than two years on a hospital waiting list.
New figures out on Thursday show that at the end of December 323,174 people were waiting for a first appointment with a consultant.
That is about 18,000 more than for the same period the previous year.
Some of the longest waiting lists were for hip and knee replacements and cataract procedures.
The number of people waiting to be admitted to hospital for inpatient and day case procedures has also gone up 105,159 - around 5,000 more than for 2019.
The vast majority of patients are still waiting more than the recommended nine weeks for an outpatient appointment and more than are half waiting for longer than a year.
Pain was getting 'excruciating'
Ms McLucas said the decision to pay for private surgery was one "one of the most difficult" of her life.
"Up until now, private healthcare would have been something I would have been very much against," she said.
"I believed that the NHS was there and would do everything that we needed done. I was on a waiting list for over two years.
"The pain was just getting more and more excruciating. I couldn't even stand up - it got to the stage where I couldn't put weight on it.
"It was like somebody was just constantly sawing into my hip, groin and then that just completely knocks your mental health.
"I just felt that I couldn't go on any more. I didn't want to be here any more. What was the point because all in front of me all I could see was this waiting list going on and on and on."
Ms McLucas reached a low last Christmas when she was having to take painkillers, including morphine, to control the pain.
"It got to the stage where getting out of bed was nearly too much," she said.
She said she spent Christmas Day in her bed.
"You knew people were able to enjoy Christmas Day and I was just lying up there in bed crying in pain.
"No matter how much pain killers they gave me - it wasn't enough," she said.
It took the edge of it but it took the edge off everything else," she added.
There have been repeated calls for more to be done to tackle hospital waiting lists which are the worst in the UK.
'Condition has worsened'
Northern Ireland director of the charity Versus Arthritis, Sara Graham, said: "I do appreciate the health service is under enormous pressure and it's probably hard to know where to start but the waiting lists do keep getting worse and so we need a clear programme for recovery.
"Liz was waiting for two years with no communication at all about her surgery," she said.
She added that patients need clear communication from their health providers about waiting times and how to access support while they are waiting.
"The reality is their health deteriorates and so by the time they get access to surgery, if that's what they are waiting for, their condition has worsened.
"The impact on individuals and on the health service only gets worse as the waiting times continue," she told BBC News NI.
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A 35-year-old man died after being found unresponsive in a police cell less than a day after being taken into custody, the police watchdog says. | Ian Dyche's death has been referred to the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) by Staffordshire Police.
Mr Dyche, the IOPC said, was arrested at his home in Cannock on 29 April and taken to the town's police station.
The following morning, he was found unresponsive and taken by ambulance to hospital where he died on 8 May.
A post-mortem examination into the cause of Mr Dyche's death was inconclusive, the IOPC said, adding further tests were due.
CCTV from the custody block at Cannock police station is being examined along with body-cam footage from the arresting officers.
IOPC commissioner Derrick Campbell said the investigation was at an early stage and extended his sympathies to Mr Dyche's family.
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A mysterious flying triangle has been spotted in the sky over Shropshire in recent weeks - the latest of unexplained goings on stretching over decades. Is the county a hotspot for UFOs? | The "Flying Dorito" as it has become known, was spotted near Sleap Airfield, near Wem, and over The Wrekin, the Shropshire Star reported.
These sightings, the former described as an aircraft making a low humming noise, prompted Nigel Haymen to use Your Questions to ask us to investigate.
It is not the first time we have looked into what inhabits the skies above Shropshire - in 2010, actor John Challis joined BBC Inside Out to look for UFOs from Lyth Hill in Shrewsbury.
The town's UFO Investigations and Research Unit described the hill as a "high intensity" area for sightings at the time. But no flying objects appeared for our cameras.
Christian Delaney of the Shropshire Paranormal and UFO Society said he had seen UFOs over the county for a number of years.
"I've seen something yellow that looked like a cigar do a figure of eight over the Wrekin for three or four minutes getting faster and faster," he said.
"And on Lyth Hill one [a UFO] appeared and the light got bigger and bigger like it was expanding and then changed colour.
"I don't know what it is about Shropshire but they do seem to have quite a presence here," he said.
Former UFO investigator for the Ministry of Defence, Nick Pope, said: "Shropshire certainly seems to be something of a UFO hotspot.
"I personally investigated a fascinating wave of sightings in 1993, centred on RAF Cosford and RAF Shawbury," he said.
A meteorological officer at Shawbury described seeing a vast triangular-shaped craft flying slowly over the base, making a low-frequency humming sound, before suddenly accelerating away, many times faster than a military jet, he said.
Mr Pope said previous 'Flying Dorito' sightings may have been generated by people seeing the last airworthy Vulcan bomber which stopped flying last year. Or a B2 stealth bomber rarely flown in the UK.
"These two [recent pictures] might show a secret prototype aircraft or drone, though another less exciting possibility is that it's a hang glider or a power hang glider," he said.
Nathan Cross from Sleap airfield told the Shropshire Star the photo could have been of a Rutan VariEze aircraft at an angle.
"I know that one was flying at about the given time and I have spoken to the pilot who concurs," he said. "Or perhaps it is a genuine UFO - we will remain diligent."
A West Mercia Police spokesman said: "We've had no reports of UFOs over the Shropshire area since March of this year. In that case the report turned out to be a helicopter.
"Over the last few years we've had a total of four reports of UFOs within Shropshire, including the helicopter...none were suspicious."
Mr Pope said aircraft lights, weather balloons, meteors, satellites and Chinese lanterns can be mistaken for UFOs.
"People really do want to think there's something out there," he said. "Additionally, people's mistrust of government fuels conspiracy theories, and the idea that the authorities are covering up the truth about UFOs is a popular one.
"I should say that there's no smoke without fire, and that while the sceptics have to be right every day, the believers only have to be right once."
This story was inspired by a question from Nigel Haymen.
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Shares in Mitsubishi Motors jumped 16.6% following suspension on news Nissan is planning to take a major stake in the embattled carmaker. Nissan itself fell 1.4%. | Both sides announced a strategic alliance after the close of regular trade, valued at $2.2bn (£1.52bn).
Elsewhere in Asia, trader sentiment was weighed down by a disappointing close on Wall Street overnight.
Japan's Nikkei 225 closed 0.4% higher at 16,646.34.
China's Shanghai Composite finished flat at 2,835.86 while Hong Kong's Hang Seng index closed down 0.7% at 19,915.46.
In Australia, the ASX/200 fell 0.2% to close at 5,359.30 points.
South Korea's benchmark Kospi index finished the day flat at 1,977.49.
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Work has started on a new railway station in a Bradford village, more than 40 years after the closure of the old one. | The station on Cleckheaton Road in Low Moor is due to open in spring and will serve the Calder Valley line between Bradford Interchange and Halifax.
It has been funded by the sale of rolling stock and money from the Local Transport Plan.
The old Low Moor station closed in 1965 and was subsequently demolished.
West Yorkshire Combined Authority Transport Committee said it would attract park and ride users, which would reduce congestion on the roads.
The station will include 130 car parking spaces and have direct access to and from the adjacent Spen Valley Greenway for pedestrians and cyclists.
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A civillian was killed when suspected Tamil tigers attacked a checkpoint at Komari in Ampara on Saturday, the 21st. | Police said the civillian was a mason who was involved in the construction of houses for the tsunami affected families.
At the time of the attack he was walking on the road, police said.
Wasantha Chandrapala, Lake House Correspondent for Ampara said,subsequent to the attack construction workers have left the area in fear of further violence.
Meanwhile, police found eight claymore mines burried in a paddy filed in Damana in Amapara area.
Police also found a variety of ammunitions concealed in the area, Lake House Correspondent for Ampara Wasantha Chandrapala said.
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In 1987, a young protester with pro-democracy slogans painted on his body was shot dead by police in Dhaka, Bangladesh. His bullet-ridden body was dumped in a police cell, but a photograph of him helped inspire an uprising that toppled a dictator. The BBC's Moazzem Hossain, who was in the cell next to the painted man's body that day, went in search of the story behind an image. | In the week leading up to 10 November 1987, the city of Dhaka was tense. President Hussain Muhammad Ershad had cut off the Bangladeshi capital from the rest of the country, severing virtually all communication channels. Schools, colleges, and universities had been shut and students ordered to vacate halls. Political protests and rallies had been banned, and Ershad, a military dictator, was using emergency powers to detain hundreds of pro-democracy activists.
But opposition political forces were mobilising thousands of supporters to press for the president's resignation. On the morning of 10 November, I was among the thousands of activists heading for the protest. We never made it. At about 9am, me and several other protesters were picked up by riot police. We were beaten mercilessly, bundled into a lorry and taken to the police station.
As the day wore on, more political prisoners were brought in. There were running battles all over Dhaka. Some of the protesters brought in had bullet wounds. Among the bodies one stood out - it had a slogan painted on the bare chest. The words, in bright white paint against the man's lifeless brown skin, electrified us.
"Sairachar nipat jak" - "Down with autocracy".
The body belonged to a man named Noor Hossain. We didn't know who he was then. We didn't know that the spot where he was gunned down would be named after him. We didn't know he would go on to become famous - his sacrifice immortalised in books and films, in poems and on postage stamps. We didn't know that a photograph of him taken moments before he died would become a symbol of our generation's long and bloody struggle for democracy.
The brother
I have looked at the photographs of Noor Hossain many times over the past 33 years. He looks determined. His youthful body, and the slogans painted on it, seem to radiate light in the glare of the sun.
The day after Noor died, aged 26, pictures of him appeared on the front pages of newspapers around Bangladesh, shocking the government and inspiring millions. The protests he and I were involved in in 1987 were violently put down, but three years later another protest movement succeeded in toppling President Ershad, and many of those protesters were inspired by the image of Noor Hossain.
I have often wondered what led this man from a working-class family in Dhaka to commit his extraordinary act. Ahead of the 30th anniversary of the uprising he inspired, I set out to find answers.
Noor's father, Mujibur Rahman, was an autorickshaw driver in the old part of Dhaka at the time. Mujibur died 15 years ago, but I was able to track down Noor's brother Ali. He still vividly remembered the last days of Noor's life.
"My father knew that Noor had been involved in politics - he had frequently stayed away from home and he was taking part in political rallies," Ali said.
After Noor failed to return home for two consecutive nights, his parents became worried. On the morning of 10 November 1987, they tracked him down to a mosque in the city.
"My parents requested him to come back home, but he declined. He said he would come later," Ali recalled. "That was the last time my parents saw him."
Later that day, Noor joined the ranks of protesters. The demonstration turned violent, with protesters throwing bricks and homemade bombs at police and police firing tear gas and eventually live bullets at protesters. Three people, including Noor Hossain, were fatally shot, dozens more were wounded.
Word reached Noor's family home later that day that he had been shot. Mujibur and Ali rushed first to the place Noor had been protesting, then to a police hospital, finally to the station where they heard Noor's body had been taken. The officers outside would not let them in, but they confirmed there was a body inside daubed with paint. If we give you that body now there will be riots, they said.
No officers were ever charged with Noor's murder. No officers were charged during all of Gen Ershad's time in power, despite hundreds of protesters being killed by police.
I asked Ali if he could remember who painted the fateful slogans on his brother's body that day. He said yes, the man's name was Ikram Hossain. Remarkably, Ikram was living at the time in President Ershad's staff quarters, and his brother was the president's messenger. Ali gave me Ikram's number.
The painter
I called Ikram.
"It was me," he said.
In 1987, Ikram was an 18-year-old signboard artist. He lived with his elder brother at Bangabhaban, the presidential residence in Dhaka, and ran a small shop in the Motijheel area, mainly painting signboards and making banners.
"I knew Noor Hossain by face, he used to work as an employee in a business selling used office furniture. But we didn't talk much," Ikram said.
On 9 November, Ikram was finishing his work for the day and planning to shutter the shop by 5pm. But before he could close up, Noor Hossain approached him with a request.
"He took me into a narrow alley nearby. There he wrote the slogans on the wall with chalk. Then he took off his shirt and requested me to write the slogans on his body."
Ikram was scared.
"I told him I can't do this. My brother is the president's messenger. We will be in trouble. You could be arrested. You could be killed."
But Noor was determined. He told Ikram not to worry, that the next day there would be a hundred people with the same slogans painted on their skin.
Ikram relented and painted two slogans on Noor.
"Sairachar nipat jak" ("Down with autocracy") - on his front.
"Gonotontra mukti pak" ("Let democracy be freed") - on his back.
Then Ikram added two full stops after each. "So that I could recognise my writing from the hundred others," he said.
But the next day, there was only one man on the street with painted slogans on his body, and in the moments before he died the bright lettering caught the eye of the photographers in the crowd.
The photographers
Pavel Rahman only ever saw Noor Hossain from the back, he told me. I used to work with Rahman at a newspaper in Dhaka - he has been a photographer for nearly half a century.
When he saw the flash of white paint that day and deciphered the slogan, his heart pounded.
"I had never seen a protester with slogans written on his own body before that," he said. "He immediately captured my attention. Before he disappeared in the crowd, I had the chance to click only twice, one vertical and one horizontal snap, both from the back. I was unaware that he had a slogan written on his chest as well."
That evening, as Rahman was developing the films in the dark room of his newspaper office, a colleague told him that the painted protester had died.
"There was some debate whether we should publish the photo. My editor initially thought it will be too risky, there could be a huge backlash from the government. In the end we decided to go with it," he said.
"President Ershad was furious. There was a suggestion from the government that we faked it. I was scared. I had to go into hiding for several days."
Pavel's photograph spread round the country and became a poster. But nobody would have known Noor's face if it weren't for another photographer, Dinu Alam, who captured his image from the front.
"I took several shots, all from the front. I was lingering around him for some time, fully unaware that he had another slogan on the back," Dinu said.
The two photographers had between them captured the full extent of Noor's painted protest, and the end of his life.
"Probably I captured the last moments of Noor Hossain," Dinu said.
The night guard
When Ikram Hossain saw the picture on the front page of the newspaper the next day he was devastated. He immediately blamed himself for his friend's death.
"I thought that if I didn't write the slogans on his body, he would be alive," he said.
Fearing for his safety, Ikram went into hiding and avoided police and authorities for several years.
Only after the fall of President Ershad, three years later, did Ikram feel safe. Finally a memorial had been arranged at the site of Noor's grave and Ikram went. After the service, he approached Noor's brother, Ali. Guilt and fear had kept him from the family for years, but now he wanted to tell his story. You should meet my father, Ali said.
At the family home, Ikram wept. He apologised and stated his guilt. But Noor's father embraced him. "You are like my son," he said. "We lost Noor Hossain but you are my son now. It is because of you and Noor Hossain that we have democracy."
Back in 1987, it took a week for Mujibur and his wife Mariam Bibi to find out what had happened to their son's body. Noor had been buried by police in secret, in an unmarked grave in a cemetery in Dhaka, alongside two other protesters who were killed that day. But word got to the family via the men who had been made to prepare the bodies and bury them.
I called the caretaker of the Jurain graveyard, where Noor was buried. The caretaker had only been there a few years but he gave me the name of Mohammad Alamgir, who was the night guard at Jurain back in 1987. After a few phone calls, I reached him, and asked him if he remembered that night.
"It was about 2.30am when they arrived," Alamgir said. "I was the night guard but I had to do other things - digging graves, washing bodies, burying the dead."
Alamgir told the men who came that night that he did not bury the dead after 11pm. But they insisted, saying they were from the government. Alamgir took the bodies and began to wash them while others dug the graves.
"The body with the writings on had a bullet hole below the chest, near the belly," he said. "I tried to scrub off the paint, but it was too difficult."
He said the same to Ikram Hossain, the painter, back in 1990 when the two met at the graveside. "It must have been difficult," Ikram replied. "I wrote the slogans in enamel paint."
Much later, Noor's parents received another surprise visit from someone who had waited years to see them. In 1997, General Ershad, who had been sent to prison in 1990, was released, and he visited Mujibur and Mariam at their home. He had come to apologise.
"He said to my father, 'If your son was alive today, the way he would have taken care of you, I will try to do the same'", Ali Hossain recalled.
Over the next few years, Ershad kept in touch and occasionally sent the family money, until Mujibar spoke at a memorial for his son at Dhaka University one day, telling the audience, "I never want to see the return of dictatorship in Bangladesh."
It infuriated Ershad, Ali said.
"He never called my father again."
The general
I met General Ershad once, more than a decade after Noor died. It was 1999 and Ershad, then an opposition politician, was travelling up and down the country to rejuvenate his support base. I accompanied him on a river trip in southern Bangladesh. One of his aides had told him that I was a radical activist during my student days and had been jailed by police.
"I hear you were a revolutionary," he said jokingly one day during breakfast.
The general, who died last year, had an easy-going, charming personality, but he had many faces. He came to power in a bloodless military coup in 1982, following the same script used by military rulers all over the world - pledging to fight corruption, reform the government and clean up politics. He made Islam the state religion of Bangladesh, fundamentally changing the secular constitution, to please religious conservatives.
His electoral victory in 1986 was marred by charges of voter fraud, and while in office Ershad suspended the country's constitution and parliament and cracked down on political opponents. And he presided over the violent putting down of the 1987 protests that landed me in a prison cell and cost Noor Hossain his life.
General Ershad was also vain. He had his poems - rumoured to be written by ghostwriters - published on the front page of national newspapers, while heavily censoring the papers' news reports.
Ershad's nine-year rule came to an end in 1990, when he was forced to resign in the face of a mass uprising. Days later he was imprisoned. Thousands of people were marching, singing, dancing on the streets of Dhaka. I can still remember the jubilation of that day. The country had not seen anything like it since independence in 1971. It felt like a new dawn, a fresh start for Bangladesh. But it was short lived.
The two main parties, the Awami League and the BNP, were soon locked in a bitter fight for power. In the coming decades they took turns to rule the country, deploying the very same authoritarian tactics used by the old regime.
Bangladesh's descent back into authoritarianism pains the activists who suffered in their long fight for freedom against General Ershad.
"We sacrificed our youth, the best part of our life, to fight for democracy," said Nasir-ud-doza, a veteran of the 1990 uprising who I first met in a police lorry in 1987, where he was being kicked repeatedly as the lorry rumbled along the road to the station.
"I will never be able to forgive those politicians who killed our dream for their petty personal or party interests," he said.
Bangladesh had briefly enjoyed democracy "in its full flourish", Ikram Hossain recalled, "like a bright full moon in the night sky".
"Where is that democracy now?" he said.
Ikram is still a signboard artist, though the work is mostly digital now. There is little need to have enamel paint lying around. His small shop on Hatkola Road is just a few hundred metres from the presidential staff quarters where he lived in 1987. A little further away, near Ikram's old shop, is the alley where he wrote the slogans on Noor's body, and a little beyond that the spot where Noor was gunned down, now called "Noor Hossain Square".
Ikram can still clearly remember daubing the thick paint on Noor Hossain that day, his hands shaking with fear.
"It was not my best handwriting," he said. "But it was the best thing I have ever written."
Photographs by Yousuf Tushar for the BBC
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Highland League club Clachnacuddin FC is at the heart of its community - but the team is now playing its football on a rugby pitch after part of its ground was damaged in a fire. BBC Scotland journalist Donald Pollock says the club is grateful for the help, but keen to return to its traditional home. | There was a time when Clach na Cùdainn - The Stone of the Tub - was an important symbol for the people of Inverness.
The stone was where women rested with baskets of clothes after washing them in the River Ness.
So synonymous was the stone with the Highland capital that locals were known as Clachnacuddins.
A story goes of a fine gentleman from India arriving in town and asking to be shown the famous Clachnacuddin, only to be somewhat underwhelmed by the stone to which he had drunk so many toasts.
Times change, and despite the stone's now prominent position by Inverness Town House, Clach na Cùdainn lost significance among Invernessians.
Except in the Merkinch area, where they cherish the football team that kept the name alive.
There are those who maintain that Merkinch is almost a town within Inverness. And right enough, there is a feeling of the high street about Grant Street.
As you cross the Black Bridge over the River Ness, it's hard not to conclude that you're entering a distinct community.
At its heart is Grant Street Park, the home of Clachnacuddin FC.
Like all good football clubs, Clach typify the community that surrounds them. They roll with the punches.
Whether you know it as Grant Street, Clach Park, or the Ferry San Siro, their home has its own special charm.
Celtic Park had the Jungle. Anfield has the Kop. The Clach diehards gather in the Wineshed.
The team used to take to the field to the tune of the BBC's Grandstand.
With the late Billy Nelson on the tannoy, there would be a running commentary on local news between the team lines and songs - some of his own numbers among them. Surely you've heard Westering Home to the Ferry?
'Welcome to the Ferry'
On another occasion, Forres Mechanics were visiting Merkinch.
As time slipped away, a high ball was pumped into the box.
The Mechanics keeper rose majestically to make a catch, only to be confronted by a gang of Clach attackers in whom the spirit of Nat Lofthouse was alive and well. Ball and man were left gasping for air in the back of the net at the bottom of a Merkinch pile up.
An elderly gentleman, barely awake through the game, was taking it all in behind the goals. The magnificent scene seemed to rouse him from his slumber. Perhaps it took him back to his youth.
He was awake now all right and he had a message for the Forres custodian, one delivered with such style and volume that they might well have heard it back at Mosset Park.
He shouted "Welcome to the Ferry."
Aye, Clach Park has a special charm.
But only rarely does it have a queue of spectators waiting to get in.
That's exactly what happened earlier this month when Clach made a temporary flit across town.
With repairs continuing at Grant Street following a fire in a changing room before Christmas, the Merkinch Lilywhites were granted permission to switch their Highland League match against Fort William to Canal Park, the impressive home of Highland Rugby Club.
Friday night games
On a biting cold January night, Clach against the Fort was the hottest ticket in town as 700 fans turned out to watch two sides at the foot of the Highland League.
It wasn't a great night for Clach from a football perspective.
A number of the young Fort side on loan from Caley Thistle were well acquainted with Canal Park from training sessions with their Scottish Championship club.
They seemed visibly more comfortable than Clach on the plastic pitch as they secured just their second league win of the season. Both against Clach.
But off the park, the bumper crowd was a significant boost for Clach at a time when they need every penny.
Little wonder that talk began of more Friday night games at the shiny new Canal Park.
In their hour of need
Clach will be back this Friday when Forres visit the Highland capital once more. Depending on those repairs at Clach Park, this could yet be a more regular occurrence in the weeks ahead.
Will 700 fans turn up as the novelty factor wears off and without the Inverness Caledonian Thistle link to Fort William? Perhaps not.
But any kind of increase on their average will be good news for Clach.
Highland Rugby Club and High Life Highland, the body that runs leisure facilities in the Highlands, deserve great credit for helping out the Merkinchers in their hour of need.
Canal Park is an excellent facility and one which appears to have breathed new life into the rugby club.
It's a welcome short-term fix for Clach too, and one they are grateful for, but it isn't home.
Even with 700 fans, the atmosphere against Fort William was a little flat. In truth, it felt a bit like watching a training session.
It certainly wasn't Clach Park.
Because if you take Clachnacuddin out of Merkinch, they aren't really Clachnacuddin at all.
Let's hope they're Westering Home to the Ferry soon.
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Satellite images appear to show China has built aircraft hangars on disputed islands in the South China Sea.
The images, from late July, were released by the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative and appear to confirm that Chinese military fighter jets could, at some point, be based on Fiery Cross, Subi and Mischief Reefs.
The revelation is likely to stoke tension with neighbours and the US, all of whom have raised concerns over what they call "the militarisation of the South China Sea", says analyst Alexander Neill from the International Institute for Strategic Studies - Asia. | Read more:
What do the pictures show exactly?
These images show three new air bases built on artificial islands nearing completion in the Spratly islands at the heart of the South China Sea.
They demonstrate the remarkable pace and scale of China's island-building campaign in the South China Sea, where only two years ago coral reefs and atolls existed.
The pictures focus in particular on the construction of reinforced hangars designed to shelter an array of Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) aircraft.
What else is on the islands?
Apart from accommodation blocks and administrative buildings, the images also show a selection of unidentified hexagonal structures facing towards the sea on the three islands. Each island has four of these structures forming a trapezoid shape.
In addition, each island also hosts a mysterious group of three towers. There is speculation that such structures are in fact reinforced air defence facilities which could house surface-to-air missile batteries.
Beyond the hangars and air defence systems, we can also see three naval bases readying for operation, including large berthing facilities and harbours for the PLA Navy, the coast guard and other maritime law enforcement agencies.
What does this tell us?
China has embarked on a power projection drive in the region which will considerably extend the range of its naval and air capabilities.
This military construction on the islands indicates that within a few months China will be in a position to deploy fighter regiments on the islands totalling nearly 80 aircraft - a formidable addition to its existing capabilities in the South China Sea.
In addition, the bases will be able to host Chinese strategic bombers such as the H6-K, early warning and surveillance aircraft and long range transport and tanker jets.
Because such airbases are inherently vulnerable to attack, China appears to be deploying a sophisticated air defence network and the command and control infrastructure to protect its new island bases.
But didn't China promise it wouldn't militarise the South China Sea?
In his state visit to the US in September 2015, Xi Jinping stated that China did not intend to pursue militarisation of the Spratly islands.
However, from China's perspective, the islands it claims and the sea space within the nine-dash line are China's sovereign territory requiring necessary defence measures.
US officials quickly sought more specific reassurance from Mr Xi to include all of the South China Sea. Chinese senior figures later qualified Mr Xi's statement by suggesting that defence measures should be commensurate to perceived threat to China's territorial integrity.
Beijing has now blamed US Navy Freedom of navigation operations (FONOPS) for triggering military escalation in the South China Sea, allowing justification in Beijing's narrative for defensive measures on the new artificial islands.
What does this mean for China's neighbours?
In the wake of the Permanent Court of Arbitration's ruling overwhelmingly in favour of the Philippines, President Rodrigo Duterte has yet to react to the appearance of three advanced Chinese airbases within his nation's exclusive economic zone. Perhaps there may be little reaction at all.
The Philippines' navy is almost non-existent, so its only recourse may be to rely on its defence treaty with the US, but Mr Duterte seems to have been reticent towards too cosy a relationship with Washington.
Vietnam on the other hand - another claimant in the South China Sea - apparently has little tolerance for Beijing's activities. Recent news reports suggest that Vietnam has deployed advanced mobile rocket launchers to some of the islands it occupies in the region, putting China's new island garrisons within range of bombardment.
The timing of Beijing's deployment of fighter jets, bombers and air defence missiles on the islands is uncertain, but Vietnam's military deployments will also offer Beijing further justification for its future arms build-up in the South China Sea.
Alexander Neill is a Shangri-La Dialogue Senior Fellow at IISS-Asia (International Institute for Strategic Studies - Asia).
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The US Congress has slashed $85bn (£56bn) from the federal budget through the end of September. Now, foreign aid groups that rely on US support fear the cuts will devastate the people in the most desperate need. | By Tara McKelveyBBC News Magazine
When Jeremy Konyndyk, director of policy for Mercy Corps, talks about budget cuts in the US, he barely mentions the impact the reductions will have on Americans.
Instead, he worries about people overseas - such as those he met recently in Niger.
In January, Konyndyk visited a village in the county's Ouallam region, roughly 62 miles (100km) from Niamey, where he met a group of about 20 women who had received a goat through a food-security programme.
"This programme at least gives them some prospects for getting through the drought without getting totally wiped out," he says. The budget cuts, he says, will make it harder to help those and other women in Niger.
The US Congress has slashed $85bn from US spending for this fiscal year, which ends in October. The deficit reduction measures are referred to in Washington DC jargon as sequestration.
In Washington, White House officials say the cuts will affect everything from White House tours (cancelled) to domestic airline flights (delayed). Despite those claims, though, some of the cuts to the budget will barely be felt.
"It's not the end of the world," says Gordon Adams, an American University professor who was a senior budget official in the Clinton White House. "It's a haircut."
But the cuts affect not only Americans - people around the world will see its impact.
European officials may spend less time in meetings, for example, because their counterparts in Washington will be making fewer overseas trips. Some Pentagon officials have already cancelled trips to Europe this spring.
But for people living in other parts of the world, the impact could be more significant.
The US is the world's largest provider of humanitarian aid, according to the London-based Overseas Development Institute. The US also offers military assistance to countries in the Middle East and other regions and funds programmes for global health, refugee aid and more.
The March law writing the cuts into the budget slashed funding for these and other programmes by roughly 5%.
More than $2.7bn will be taken from state department foreign operations and other programmes, according to the Congressional Research Service.
In some cases the cuts will affect government institutions in other countries. Aid to countries such as Egypt (the US provides roughly $1.3bn annually to its military) and Israel (roughly $3bn annually) also may be reduced.
The budgetary reductions will have an impact on individuals, say aid workers, since the cuts will be applied to programmes already stretched thin.
Contributions to international peacekeeping, which helps to tamp down on violence in conflict-ridden countries such as Mali, will be reduced by $20m.
And funds for humanitarian programmes, which help families in the Horn of Africa and other places in crisis, will be cut by roughly $200m, state department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland has said.
Efforts to fight disease in Africa may also be affected, since global health programmes will lose more than $400m in US funding.
"We work on programmes for the most needy people on the planet," says Tom Hart, US executive director for the ONE Campaign, the advocacy group founded by U2's Bono.
"These people are living on the edge. About a million kids won't be vaccinated. A million bed nets that prevent malaria won't be distributed."
Hart and other advocates fear the lives of many people overseas will become harder if aid programmes, which include food security and agricultural projects, are reduced.
And many humanitarian aid workers say their programmes are already financially strapped.
"At this point, we are facing an acute number of crises," says Jeremy Kadden, a senior legislative manager at InterAction, a consortium of non-governmental organisations based in the US. "We have more people in need than ever before."
Konyndyk of Mercy Corps says the budget cuts chip away at efforts to help people in other parts of the world and put Americans in a bind.
"The government is faced with a kind of Sophie's choice," he says. "Which disaster do you save?"
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A main route into Derby has reopened after months of roadworks. | The Wyvern Way slip road taking city-bound traffic from the A52 into Pride Park has been closed for 13 weeks as part of major improvements.
However, the road from Pride Park back on to the A52 will remain closed until July 2020 to allow a new footbridge over the road to be assembled on site.
Derby City Council thanked businesses, residents and motorists for their patience during the disruption.
When the project started in June, it was already 12 months behind schedule and at £42m, nearly three times over budget.
An audit report identified a series of mistakes with the project, saying "everything that could go wrong did go wrong".
The authority said once all the work was completed, it will deliver benefits to people in Derby and Nottingham.
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A letter written to World War I Secretary of State for War, Lord Kitchener, has been sold in Oxford. | Sent by Chancellor of the Exchequer Reginald McKenna in 1915, it discusses the numbers of troops needed to replace casualties on the Western Front.
His calculations show the levels of "irrecoverable wastage" before conscription was introduced in 1916.
The letter sold for £687 at Bonhams auctioneers, more than the expected price of £400.
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CCTV footage has been released showing thieves using a "relay" device, which receives a signal from the victim's key inside their home, to steal a car. | West Midlands Police believe it is the first time the high-tech crime has been caught on camera.
Relay boxes can receive signals through walls, doors and windows but not metal.
The theft took just one minute and the Mercedes car, stolen from the Elmdon area of Solihull on 24 September, has not been recovered.
In the footage, one of the men can be seen waving a box in front of the victim's house.
The device receives a signal from the key inside and transmits it to the second box next to the car.
The car's systems are then tricked into thinking the key is present and it unlocks, before the ignition can be started.
Mark Silvester, from West Midlands Police's crime reduction team, advised using a Thatcham-approved steering lock to cover the entire steering wheel.
The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders said an option was to put keys inside an RFID signal blocking bag, which stop electromagnetic signals.
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A landmark bridge on Teesside has closed as a result of technical difficulties, less than a month after it underwent a major overhaul. | Middlesbrough's Transporter Bridge re-opened three weeks ago after work to replace its century-old motors.
A problem has now arisen with the new remote system which controls the gondola.
The software is being upgraded and it is hoped the Grade II listed structure will be back in action by the weekend.
Councillor Paul Thompson, Middlesbrough Council's executive member for transport, said: "The bridge is renowned for its reliability, but on occasions unforeseen problems arise, and these are dealt with as quickly as possible to ensure disruption is kept to a minimum.
"I'm grateful to users for their patience, we will do our best to have the Transporter up and running again as soon as possible."
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A cannabis farm consisting of more than 500 plants with a street value of £300,000 has been found. | Cleveland Police said an officer discovered the farm in a property on West Road in Loftus.
Officers are trying to find the people responsible for growing the plants, a spokeswoman said.
Police have also issued a list of "tell-tale signs which often give cannabis farms away" for which members of the public "should be vigilant".
These include:
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Hell yes, I'm tough enough. | By Ross HawkinsPolitical correspondent, BBC News
Ed Miliband might just have acquired a catchphrase.
The Labour leader who Jeremy Paxman dubbed a "north London geek" borrowed the argot of a Wild West gunslinger when he came out to confront questions about his character during the first of the leaders' TV specials.
When Paxman - the grand alpha-male of political interviewing - leaned in, so too did Miliband.
"That's why Cameron didn't want to debate him," one Labour aide declared, at volume, as he entered the post-show spin room.
Labour think Miliband has been caricatured and if the public sees more of the real man they will be impressed.
Political image
The question is: will the tough guy image convince the public?
Miliband faced hostile questions from the voters in the studio audience, some of whom looked pretty unconvinced by the answers.
They picked, once again, over his relationship with the brother he beat to the leadership. It's healing, apparently.
But then despite this not being a head-to-head debate, and certainly not the event the broadcasters originally wanted, it wasn't an easy night for either leader.
David Cameron came under sustained fire from Paxman, accepting that he had failed to meet his commitment on net migration.
Could you live on a zero-hours contract he was asked, time and time again.
Cameron mentioned a government ban on exclusivity in those contracts, but he squirmed a little all the same.
Westminster spin
There was an on the record commitment from him to serve every day of a second term, while committing not to serve a third.
Just how would that work? A question the PM's aides say is for another day.
There were interesting hints from the other side about their future plans - Ed Miliband said overall spending would probably fall under Labour.
But really - this was all about the theatre.
It was pretty good telly, but then this is written in the spin room half an hour after the show's end credits.
Everyone here, now, seems excited - spinners, journalists and politicians.
The Westminster village has come to west London to play its favourite games.
Just how it will actually go down in the country at large, and just how much attention voters will give to 90 minutes of politics on a Thursday night several weeks before the election, won't be revealed amid the dirty coffee cups of a post-programme spin room.
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Pakistan says it is winning the battle against separatist insurgents in the restive province of Balochistan. But Baloch activists say abductions, torture and killings by the army are deepening hostility for Pakistan. | By Shahzeb JillaniBBC News, Turbat
On a hot sunny day, a group of aspiring young men and women are attending classes at a small university in Turbat. Established two years ago in rented accommodation, it's the city's first public university.
"Just look at our campus," says Hani Abdur Rasheed, an outspoken student doing a Master's in commerce. "You could hardly call it a university."
For a region with a strong sense of grievance against the central government, it's a rudimentary start.
The university, which has about 500 students, is attracting enrolment from remote areas of southern Balochistan.
"Lack of education has been the biggest obstacle for us. And it's all due to decades of official neglect. The government spends more on soldiers than schools and colleges," says Ms Rasheed.
The army has fought separatist Baloch militants on and off during much of Pakistan's existence.
The latest wave of insurgency was triggered after the army bombed and killed an elderly Baloch tribal chief, Nawab Akbar Bugti, in 2006.
Nine years on, the army says the militants - or "the miscreants" as it likes to call them - are either on the run or increasingly laying down their arms.
The government has encouraged that in an offer for a general "amnesty". The scheme involves financial rewards for fighters who agree to renounce violence against the state.
Pictures and news footage of tribesmen publicly surrendering their weapons before government officials have been running prominently on the Pakistani media.
But Ghani Parwaaz, a respected Baloch poet and writer in the city of Turbat, dismisses the campaign as farcical.
"Everyone knows it's a part of an official propaganda," he says. "Hardly any one of those shown surrendering on television news channels is a known fighter. In fact, many of them are reportedly extortionists linked to the army-backed politicians in the government."
Balochistan is a sparsely populated region, rich in gas and coal reserves, as well as copper and gold. Yet it has remained Pakistan's most impoverished province. Baloch nationalists have long accused the central government of exploitation and denying the province its due rights.
The region has been under renewed spotlight after Pakistan and China announced plans to build a multi-billion dollar economic corridor, linking Gwadar Port in Balochistan to the city of Kashgar in the western Chinese province of Xinjiang.
Over the years, the army and its subsidiary security force, the Frontier Corps, has captured and killed hundreds of suspected separatists.
To this end, the forces were accused of employing "death squads", gangs of criminals allowed to unleash a reign of terror against those deemed enemies of the state.
From a military standpoint, the approach may have yielded some results. But in the longer run, it has further tarnished the army's image as a ruthless force on a killing spree of its own citizens.
Separatist militants say they are fighting for a free Balochistan. The insurgents operate from their bases in remote mountains, but they also enjoy considerable support and sympathy among ordinary Balochs.
Last April, a group of gunmen shot dead 20 labourers at a construction of a bridge over a flood drain in Turbat. Baloch separatist militants were blamed for the massacre as they consider anyone employed by the government or army-sponsored projects fair game.
Most Pakistani politicians see Balochistan as a political problem and favour a peaceful solution through negotiations.
However, successive civilian governments have been too weak to lead such an effort, allowing the military to press on with trying to crush the separatists by force.
As a result, the Baloch insurgency has weakened and, increasingly, appears fragmented.
But it has come at a huge human cost.
Critics accept that security has improved in the provincial capital, Quetta, and some other areas. But they say the situation has worsened in other districts in the east and south of the province.
Rights activists accuse the military of bombing entire villages in its attempt to hunt down alleged Baloch militant leaders.
One such military operation was conducted in Awaran district on 18 July, when much of Pakistan was on Eid holiday at the end of Ramadan. The target for the aerial bombardment was Dr Allah Nazar, the chief of the Balochistan Liberation Front separatist group. The military believes he was killed in the attack.
"The operation was unannounced and indiscriminate," points out Bibi Gul, a Baloch human rights activist. "Women and children were killed and thousands left the area. The army cordoned off the entire area.
"For nearly a month, people weren't allowed to go there to pick up the dead bodies."
And so, in Balochistan, the Pakistani army still inspires fear and resentment. In Turbat, public hatred of the army is best expressed in graffiti on walls denouncing Pakistan, its security forces and their alleged "kill-and-dump" approach. The only Pakistani flags you see here are on security checkposts or on their vehicles.
The head of the provincial government, Dr Abdul Malik, says Balochistan is a conflict zone and in war, sometimes innocent people die.
"When the army is attacked, it will hit back," he says. "But the biggest sufferers of this conflict are the Baloch people. They have been left behind by poverty and lack of education. But we are trying to change that. We are trying to improve the security environment."
These days, the army still faces regular attacks, but it seems clear that the security forces have gained the upper hand in many parts of the province.
Dr Malik says the security forces have been persuaded to exercise restraint and conduct more intelligence-based operations. It has meant curtailing the role of the notorious death squads and avoiding the use of excessive force where possible, he says.
But without a political solution to bring an end to the long running conflict, security will remain a daunting challenge.
Controlling the narrative
Pakistan has a vibrant and thriving news media. But there's been a virtual blackout of alleged abuses on privately-owned national news channels, say Baloch rights activists.
Journalists say they are under intense pressure to promote a positive image of the army and its chief, General Raheel Sharif - they believe it's part of a public relations offensive to present the army as a saviour of the nation, while discrediting the political class.
Foreign reporters are not allowed to travel to Balochistan without the army's approval. Over the years, scores of local reporters have been shot dead. Those who survive live under constant fear of upsetting one side or the other.
Earlier this month, a journalist colleague reporting on Balochistan was taken to a safe house in Quetta's military garrison where he was lectured on the virtues of being a patriotic citizen. Army officers questioned him extensively about his sources and his political views. The officials told him they knew about his family, where his kids went to school and how much money he had in his bank.
And then he was informed: "Yes, we are killing the anti-state elements. And we will continue to go after them. At the end of the day, we decide who's a patriot and who's not."
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Indian scientist Ashoke Sen became a millionaire overnight when he won the $3m (£1.9m) Fundamental Physics Prize, the world's most lucrative academic award, recently. Science writer Pallava Bagla speaks to the physicist. | Ashoke Sen is a shy, reclusive Indian particle physicist working from a non-descript laboratory in the Harish-Chandra Research Institute in the not-so-happening town of Allahabad in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.
Yet, today he is one of the richest professors in the world, having been conferred the award which has prize money almost three times that of a Nobel Prize in Physics.
At his current monthly salary of about 150,000 rupees ($2,721; £1,742), it would have taken him about 83 years of continuous work to earn as much as that.
The new prize was set up by the Russian internet entrepreneur, Yuri Milner - some are calling it the "Russian Nobel Prize".
In its inaugural year, it has also been awarded to eight others and Prof Sen is the only Indian to bag the award along with scientists working in the US and Russia.
Prof Sen works in an esoteric branch of physics called "string theory", which he has been refining for the last two decades.
It is a complex mathematical theory that hopes to explain almost everything we know about the matter and energy in the universe.
He describes the string theory as being based "on the idea that the elementary constituents of matter are not point particles, but one dimensional objects or strings. This theory automatically combines quantum mechanics, and general relativity - Einstein's theory of gravity. It also has the potential for explaining the other known forces of nature - strong, weak and electromagnetic forces".
The mathematical theory itself still cannot be proved or disproved since atom smashers like those at Cern in Geneva have still not attained the enormous energies needed to test the string theory.
'Windfall'
Prof Sen says he was "surprised" on being given the award since he had not heard about it until he received a phone call from Mr Milner. But his bank balance has suddenly swollen thanks to the phone call.
He is relishing the moment and has not thought of retiring just yet.
"It is wonderful that we have an Indian physicist getting recognised in a big way for fundamental research. This is great news for science in India," said the prime minister's science adviser CNR Rao.
Prof Sen's wife Sumathi Rao is also a physicist who works at the same institute with him and they have no children.
The professor, who is fond of walking, says he has no hobby other than cooking and he likes to make tasty fried fish for his friends and family.
For somebody working on the frontiers of knowledge, Prof Sen admits he has "absolutely no religious inclinations", though he respects all faiths.
On more earthly matters, Mr Sen says he has not thought about what he is going to do with this windfall.
But unless he or his parent institution, the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), applies for a tax exemption from the government, he could end up losing as much as $1m (£638,000) of the prize money in taxes.
Ratan Kumar Sinha, a nuclear engineer and head of the DAE, says "since this is a rare recognition, we can make an attempt to get a special waiver of taxes for this award".
Ashoke Sen though says he "is happy to pay the tax that is due".
'Bright future'
Prof Sen, son of a physics teacher, was educated in the University of Calcutta before proceeding to the Stony Brook University in America.
Unlike many others, he chose to return and work in India.
So has he faced any disadvantages of working in India?
"In theoretical physics one can in principle work from any place as long as one has a computer and internet connection. So I do not find any disadvantage of being in Allahabad," he says.
His batchmate from Stony Brook and well-known theoretical physicist Rohini Godbole says she "feels on top of the world", more so because Prof Sen recently said "there are no excuses for theoretical physicists not to perform and deliver".
Ms Godbole says that Ashoke Sen has "delivered" and it proves that the particle physics community in India has really come of age.
Ashoke Sen echoes the feelings - "Indian science has a bright future," he says.
Pallava Bagla is a correspondent for Science and Science Editor for New Delhi Television
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Eleven people died in the Shoreham air crash when a vintage jet crashed on to traffic on 22 August. Footballers, cyclists, air show enthusiasts and motorists were among the victims. This is what we know about them. | Matthew Grimstone
Parents Sue and Phil and brothers David and Paul paid an emotional tribute to the footballer, who played for Worthing United.
They said: "The family are in total shock at losing our dearest son Matthew so tragically at 23 years old.
"He was the kindest person you could ever meet, with a great wit.
"In his 23 years, we can honestly say he never lost his temper."
The family went on to say that football was his passion in life and he loved working at Brighton & Hove Albion as well as playing for Worthing United. He had also been a referee.
"Matt has been taken from us at just 23 and we still think he is going to walk through the front door any minute now."
Brighton & Hove Albion Football Club say he was on his way to play for Worthing United against Loxwood in the Southern Combination Premier Division at Lyons Way at the time of the air crash, along with his Mavericks teammate Jacob Schilt.
Mr Grimstone, 23, worked at the club for the past seven years - starting with the Albion as part of the match day event team at Withdean.
Chief executive Paul Barber said: "Matt's been a very popular member of our ground staff team and has proved to be an absolute credit to the club and his boss Steve Winterburn."
Worthing United FC released a statement, saying: "Grimbles was our first team goalkeeper, 23 years of age and a huge talent, quiet and reserved but a brilliant player with a huge potential to go further in the game."
Jacob Schilt
Seagulls supporter Mr Schilt was travelling with his Mavericks teammate Matthew Grimstone when their vehicle was hit by the aircraft.
Alongside Mr Grimstone, Mr Schilt was part of Worthing United's Sussex County League Division Two championship-winning side last season, and also played for an Albion supporters' team in this year's Robert Eaton Memorial Fund (REMF) match against Crystal Palace at Lewes in April.
Brighton & Hove Albion Football Club paid tribute to him, with chairman Tony Bloom saying: "The thoughts and prayers of everybody at the club are with Matt and Jacob's family and friends at this shocking time. Our thoughts are also with all the people who have lost loved ones in this horrendous accident."
Chief executive Paul Barber added: "I got to know Jacob as one of the REMF squad, during the coaching sessions we held leading up to this year's charity match against Crystal Palace. As well as being a very good footballer, Jacob is a popular and impressive young man."
Worthing United FC released a statement, saying: "Jacob, who was 23 years of age, small in stature and a tenacious midfielder, was very skilful with an eye for goal."
"At this point we don't know how or if we will cope with this. Worthing Utd is a family, part of the football family, we have been moved by the number of tributes to them that we have received form our fellow clubs and from the public."
Mr Schilt and Mr Grimstone attended the same secondary school, Varndean, leaving in 2008.
The school said in a statement: "It is with great sadness that we remember former students Matt Grimstone and Jacob Schilt who died tragically at the weekend in the Shoreham Airshow crash.
"Jacob's father, Bob Schilt, was a teacher at the school from 1989 to 2009 and is remembered affectionately by staff who knew him."
Matt Jones
Matt Jones, 24, a personal trainer, was named on Facebook by his sister Becky Jones as one of the dead.
She wrote: "Thank you to everyone who has messaged me. We are devastated to say Matt Jones was one of the fatalities."
Maurice Abrahams
Chauffeur Maurice Abrahams, 76, from Brighton, was driving his "beloved Daimler" when the plane crashed.
It has been widely reported that he was on his way to pick up a bride for her wedding.
His family issued a statement through Sussex Police: "Maurice is a well-respected and loved father and husband. He enjoyed his work chauffeuring his beloved Daimler car and he enjoyed gardening.
"He was proud to have served in the Grenadier Guards and the Parachute Regiment. He served in Cyprus and Bahrain with the UN. In his 30s he served as a police officer with Hampshire Police."
Mark Reeves
The family of Mark Reeves, 53, said he died while combining two of his favourite hobbies, riding his cherished Honda motorbike to photograph planes at an air show.
He was a computer-aided design technician in west London who fundraised for cancer charities by parachuting and abseiling.
His family said in a statement: "Mark Reeves - motorbiker, golfer, photographer, fund-raiser - but above all else, son, brother, husband, father and grandfather.
"As many times before, he had travelled to an air show and parked up on the outskirts to grab the best photos, but he had never been to the Shoreham air show before.
'Family man'
"We will remember him as a gentle, loving, incredibly giving family man, husband to Wendy, father to Luke, granddad to three beautiful grand-daughters, brother to Denise and loving son of Ann and Kenneth.
"With his family he moved to Seaford nine years ago, drawn by our love of the sea and for Mark in particular, love of the sun.
"He was a sun worshipper and an enthusiastic holidaymaker, travelling to Fuerteventura and Madeira in recent years and would often be seen relaxing with a cocktail in hand.
"We thank everyone who has sent their love, condolences and prayers and while we appreciate that many others will be experiencing similar unspeakable grief in such tragic and public circumstances, that we now be allowed to grieve ourselves in private and in peace."
Tony Brightwell
The family of Tony Brightwell, 53, from Hove, said he was enjoying his passion of watching planes and cycling before he died.
Outside of being a health care manager for Sussex Partnership NHS and Brighton and Hove City Council, he was an aircraft enthusiast and had learnt to fly at Shoreham airfield.
With his pilot's licence, he had attended the airfield many times and was hoping to fly again one day.
His fiancee Lara said she is heartbroken that their "plans to spend their lives in the sun will now never happen".
"I watched him cycle off into the sun on his treasured ridgeback bike to watch the air show at Shoreham for a couple of hours, but he never came home," she said.
Daniele Polito
Daniele Polito was in the same car as Matt Jones, when the Hawker Hunter plane crashed and exploded on the A27 in West Sussex.
Posting on Facebook, his sister Marina said: "I miss you loads already little (big) bro! Keep making people smile."
Ms Polito said that many people loved her brother and would "miss him loads".
"I would just like to say a massive thank you to every one who has supported my family over the last few painful days.
"I am overwhelmed by the kindness you have all shown. I know many people loved him and will miss him loads,
"As long as we keep him in our hearts and memories, he will never really leave us."
Mark Trussler
Window cleaner and builder Mark Trussler is thought to have been riding his motorbike on the A27 when the plane crashed on Saturday.
His fiancee Giovanna Chirico posted a message on Facebook saying that her worst fears had been confirmed.
She wrote: "Yesterday my worst fears were confirmed and I lost not just my fiance but my best friend, soul mate and sidekick.
"No words can describe how much all ur family and friends r going to miss u.
"So glad I got to spend the last 12 years of my life with u an love u always and eternally."
Dylan Archer
Dylan Archer was on a cycle ride with his friend Richard Smith when he died in the crash.
Mr Archer, an IT company director, was raised in the Midlands and came to live in Brighton in 1991. He leaves a partner, Alice, and their two sons aged 15 and 12.
The family said in a statement: "Dylan was a kind and loving father, partner, brother, grandson and friend. His dry humour and generous nature will be greatly missed by all who knew him.
"The family are very touched by all the tributes, and thank everyone for their kindness and generosity."
Richard Smith
Richard Smith, 26, from Hove, was brought up in Buckinghamshire before going to university in Birmingham. His family moved to Hampshire in 2008 and he worked in a cycle shop in Cosham. He moved to Hove two years ago where he worked in marketing and web development.
His family said: "Richard's passions in life were for his family, friends and his beloved bikes. His boundless enthusiasm was infectious. He was a truly wonderful, caring and loving person. He will be so sorely missed by all who knew him."
He leaves a partner Victoria, parents Julie and Jonathan, and brothers William and Edward.
Graham Mallinson
Retired engineer, Graham Mallinson, 72, had been hoping to capture shots of the Vulcan bomber which was making one of its last appearances at Shoreham Airshow when he was killed.
The keen photographer from Newick, East Sussex, was described as being "at the right place at the wrong time, doing what he loved best on a beautiful summer's day," when the jet crashed.
In a statement, his family said: "He was the kindest and most generous man, who regularly gave his time to help others. Always loyal and reliable, he was a private and loving family man with a great sense of humour.
"A very caring husband and father who was dearly loved, he will be very sorely missed by all his family and the wide circle of friends who had the good fortune to know him."
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As India's largest state - Uttar Pradesh - prepares to go to the polls early next year, its largest political dynasty - the Yadavs, whose Samajwadi Party heads the state government - is in disarray. | By Kanchan ChandraPolitical scientist
The Yadav family, reported to have 20 members and counting in politics, dominates the Samajwadi Party (SP) at all levels.
Its founder and patriarch, Mulayam Singh Yadav, is the national president of the party. His elder son Akhilesh Yadav is the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh.
Mulayam Singh Yadav's brother Shivpal Yadav is a minister in the state government. All SP members of the lower house of the Indian parliament are from the Yadav family. Other members occupy local and regional offices.
Old tensions
Even though political families now dominate, or are found burrowed within most major political parties in India, no other political family has the sheer numbers and sprawl across political offices at all levels of Indian politics that the Yadav family does.
Is India's politics becoming less dynastic?
But last month, old tensions among the Yadavs broke out into open conflict.
Akhilesh Yadav moved against his uncle Shivpal by sacking ministers and bureaucrats believed to be loyal to him.
Mulayam Singh Yadav backed his brother, removing his son from the position of state president of the Samajwadi Party and appointing Shivpal Yadav to the position instead.
For the past month, son and uncle and their respective factions have been fighting it out, with the patriarch playing mediator.
The drama is still unfolding. As of today, several of Akhilesh Yadav's loyalists, including family members Ram Gopal Yadav and Udaiveer Yadav, have been expelled from the party, while Shivpal Yadav and his loyalists have been sacked from the cabinet.
It is also not clear who the party's chief ministerial candidate is: although the SP had on 17 October named Akhilesh Yadav as its candidate for chief minister, the Shivpal Yadav faction is now proposing Mulayam Singh Yadav's name for the position.
In the meantime, the SP's election campaign has come to a standstill.
Political families
The Yadavs are only one of several families in charge of India's regional governments.
According to data I collected after India's most recent round of regional elections this year, the chief ministers of 14 of India's 31 regional governments, encompassing 53% of India's population, come from political families - that is, they have family members who either preceded or followed them into politics.
Some chief ministers such as Parkash Singh Badal of the Akali Dal in northern state of Punjab belong to families that head their parties.
Others like Chief Minister Raman Singh of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the central state of Chhattisgarh have families that occupy subordinate positions within larger political parties.
Still others, such as the chief minister of the northern state of Rajasthan, Vasundhara Raje Scindia of the BJP, are from old political families with multiple prominent members in politics.
Others, such as north-eastern Meghalaya state Chief Minister Mukul Sangma of the Congress party and West Bengal state Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee of the Trinamool Congress, have only recently been joined by one or two family members who are still relatively unknown.
Regardless, it is clear that we cannot understand the dynamics of regional government in India now, without understanding the dynamics of dynastic politics. That is why the Yadav family feud is worth paying attention to.
One of the major advantages of dynastic politics is that it acts as a glue to keep the party together - or at least it produces a lower likelihood of dissension than the alternatives.
This is not because political families do not have feuds. They have plenty.
The Yadav family feud is simply the most recent of a long line of such others, including the rift between former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and her daughter-in-law Maneka Gandhi in the Nehru-Gandhi family, or between the brothers MK Stalin and MK Azhagiri of the Karunanidhi family in southern Tamil Nadu state, the Scindias in central Madhya Pradesh state, or the Thackerays in western Maharashtra state.
Exit option
But dynasties usually hold parties together, notwithstanding such feuds, because the loser does not have a good exit option. Losers who leave the parent party rarely obtain a comparable position elsewhere: they are not trustworthy enough for a rival party.
The case of the Scindias who occupy senior positions in both the Congress and the BJP, is relatively rare. Those family members who form their own party are sooner or later wiped out. Because the dynastic mantle can logically fall on only one successor, there is usually only one party left standing when the dust settles.
When Chandrababu Naidu won the struggle of succession in the Telugu Desam after NT Rama Rao's (NTR) death, for example NTR's widow Laxmi Parvathi formed a party of her own, the NTR-TDP. But the new party soon fell by the wayside.
The history of other family feuds suggests that the Samajwadi Party feud may resolve in one of two ways: either warring family members, will end up remaining, albeit rancorously, within the same party, or, if there is a split, one of the two branches may end up becoming the dominant one over time.
Regardless, it is likely to be unusually damaging to the party's electoral prospects for one main reason - this is a feud across rather than within generations.
Dynastic ties, have often in the past, served to smooth succession crises: it is easier for members of the older generation to cede their positions to members of their own family. But an inter-generational feud, in which members of two different generations are fighting over the same position is less common.
Youth icon
An intergenerational feud is especially damaging to the SP because of the large population of young people in Uttar Pradesh.
India is a very young country to start with: half of its 1.25 billion people are under 27, while almost two-thirds are younger than 35.
But the population of Uttar Pradesh is even younger: with a median age of 20, Uttar Pradesh is one of two Indian states with the youngest population in the country.
When Akhilesh Yadav became chief minister for the first time in 2012, he became the state's youngest-ever chief minister.
He quickly became an icon for the young, who are poorly represented in higher-level institutions in India.
Now, at 43, he is still the youngest contender for the position of chief minister in the field: his father Mulayam Singh Yadav is just short of 77, the Bahujan Samaj Party's Mayawati is 60, and the Congress nominee, Sheila Dixit, is almost 80.
The undermining of Akhilesh Yadav, then, regardless of whether or not it splits the Samajwadi Party as an organisation, will damage the party's capacity to attract the new generations that populate UP's electorate.
Kanchan Chandra is Professor, Wilf Family Department of Politics at New York University. Her most recent book is Democratic Dynasties (Cambridge University Press 2016), an edited collection of essays and data on India's political families
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It's more than 1,800 days since Richard Ratcliffe waved goodbye to his wife Nazanin at the departure gate at London's Gatwick Airport, worrying only about how their young daughter would cope with the long flight to Tehran. | By Caroline HawleyDiplomatic Correspondent
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe had taken Gabriella to spend time with her Iranian grandparents three times before.
And Richard had no reason in the world to think he wouldn't be back at the airport a fortnight later to pick them up.
"It was a slightly rushed goodbye," he recalls. "Gabriella, at the time, was one and three quarters and a bit of handful. So I was just really wishing her good luck with the flight."
That was the last time he saw his wife in person.
Nazanin was arrested by members of Iran's Revolutionary Guard at Tehran Airport as she prepared to fly home.
Since then, she's endured eight months of solitary confinement, blindfolded interrogations, hunger strikes to press for medical treatment, false promises of release, and almost five years of separation from her family.
"At the beginning, I just thought that this was so profoundly unfair that if we just shouted it from the rooftops, the right people would intervene and it would get sorted," Mr Ratcliffe told me. "Never in my imagination did I think this would take five years or more."
He adds: "Now the end of her actual sentence - which was once the worst-case scenario - looks like a good outcome, at this point."
At a secret trial in 2016, Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe was sentenced to five years in jail for "membership of organisations working against the Iranian state" - a reference, her husband says, to her work for the charities BBC Media Action and the Thomson Reuters Foundation. And no, she wasn't training journalists at the time of her arrest.
Sunday 7 March is the official date of her release - her lawyer has seen it marked in the computer of the Iranian judiciary. She's been counting down the weeks on a calendar at her parents' home, where she is now under house arrest with an ankle tag.
But her husband - who has fought an extraordinary, high-profile campaign for her release - doubts that she will be allowed to fly home.
He describes his wife as a hostage - used as a bargaining chip over a long-standing debt that Britain owes Iran for a tank deal that was never fulfilled.
"The Revolutionary Guard have been completely consistent over the past five years - that they arrested Nazanin as leverage for the tank debt," says Mr Ratcliffe.
"They've held her all the time that it's not being paid. And I think that if the tank debt is not paid, not only will Nazanin and other dual nationals continue to be held but more collateral will be taken."
Her case may also be caught up in negotiations over Iran's nuclear deal, the JCPOA, which the UK is working with European allies to revive.
"There's the potential for this to drag on and on," says Mr Ratcliffe. "It's perfectly possible that Nazanin gets a new court case thrown at her.
"The family have never seen a copy of the charges on which she was sentenced. There is no written documentation on anything. So they preserve the space to make it up as they go along at every stage."
He worries about the impact that any prolongation of the family's separation will have on both his wife and Gabriella, now six, who has also been counting down the days until her mother's release - on a calendar she made herself.
She returned to the UK to live with her father and start school in October 2019, hoping that her mother would soon follow behind.
"Gabriella has been promised so many times that 'Mummy is coming home soon,'" says her father.
The darkest period for Nazanin herself came in 2016, when she was held alone in a dark room, incommunicado. Her interrogators told her, wrongly, that Richard was having affairs and that they had photographic evidence.
"I don't think I can possibly understand what she's gone through," Mr Ratcliffe says.
"It's a very practised technique of really breaking someone. That fear and abuse led her to feel suicidal. She said to me: 'It would be better if I just died and you could get on with your lives.'"
In her first letter from jail to her husband, Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe wrote in despair: "Every day and every second I would submerge more and more in an ocean of doubt, fear, threat, loneliness... my wails would go unheard in that tiny, dingy, cold, grey cell."
Being parted from her daughter for so long has been a source of agony and guilt.
She apologised to her daughter from jail, saying: "Forgive me for all the nights I was not by your side to hold your warm, little hand till you fall asleep.
"Forgive me for all those moments you missed the bosom of your mother, for all those teething fever nights that I was not there for you; forgive me."
Separated by thousands of miles, the family now speaks twice a day over Skype.
Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who is now 42, watches Gabriella draw and they play games together.
Gabriella looks forward to swimming with her mother, and going to a toy shop - one day.
The couple hope to have another child, but fear that time may now be against them.
Late last month, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, phoned Ms Zahari-Ratcliffe in Tehran, reassuring her that the government is doing all it can to bring her home, but managing expectations of an imminent release.
The Foreign Office says that she and other dual British-Iranian nationals are "arbitrarily detained" by the Iranian government. It adds: "We do not accept Iran detaining dual nationals as diplomatic leverage."
But Mr Ratcliffe has been critical of the UK government's approach.
"Not to do anything that's going to rock the boat means there's no cost whatsoever to the hostage takers to continue the practice and to continue to wait," he says.
"And so both sides can wait each other out because they're not the ones bearing the cost of the waiting - whereas the victim and the family certainly are."
As for what might happen on Sunday and over the next few months, Richard says, stoically: "Fate will deal us the hand it deals us. But one day the sun will come."
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Two men were rescued from Guernsey's north-west coast after being trapped by the high tide. | The pair, believed to have been fishing, became stranded on rocks near Ladies Bay at about 09:30 BST.
A member of the public alerted the coastguard, after which the Ambulance and Rescue inshore lifeboat was launched and the men returned to land.
Jason Garnham, coxswain on the boat, said he thought the pair had been stranded for several hours.
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A humpback whale entangled in fishing gear has washed up on the north Caithness coast. | The dead whale was spotted on Wednesday before its body came ashore close to Scrabster, near Thurso, on Thursday morning.
The Inverness-based Scottish Marine Animal Stranding Scheme said it was preparing to investigate the animal's death.
It is the latest incident of its kind in about a month.
A minke whale was found dead in Barra earlier this month, and humpback in Fife in April. Both were tangled in rope.
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President Trump inadvertently spawned a new and trending hashtag after questioning why Professor Christine Blasey Ford did not report her alleged sexual assault by his Supreme Court nominee when it happened 36 years ago. | In one of a series of tweets on Friday, he said: "I have no doubt. that, if the attack on Dr Ford was as bad as she says, charges would have been immediately filed..."
There was a swift response.
Under the hashtag #WhyIDidntReport, thousands of women began recounting why it took them many years to talk about their attacks. By Sunday, there had been 675,000 tweets.
Many spoke of feeling ashamed or powerless, of reporting their attacker but not being believed, of years of trauma trying to process what had happened to them or trying to forget about it.
Celebrities also recounted their experiences.
"I was sexually assaulted twice. Once as a teenager. I never filed a police report and it took me 30 years to tell my parents," actress and activist Alyssa Milano tweeted in response to Mr Trump.
Ms Milano later wrote in a first person piece in Vox: "For me, speaking up meant reliving one of the worst moments of my life. It meant recognising my attacker's existence when I wanted nothing more than to forget that he was allowed to walk on this earth at all.
"This is what every survivor goes through. Telling our stories means being vulnerable to public attacks and ridicule when our only "crime" was to be assaulted in the first place."
Patti Davis, the daughter of Ronald and Nancy Reagan, wrote a piece in the Washington Post to explain why victims of sexual assault do not always remember the finer details.
She remembered the music executive's office she was in 40 years ago, she remembered the sky turning dark, what he was wearing, and what his breath smelled like when he raped her.
"I don't remember what month it was. I don't remember whether his assistant was still there when I arrived. I don't remember whether we said anything to each other when I left his office," she said.
She defended Prof Ford's lack of recall for some of the events of the night in 1982 when she says Brett Kavanaugh, then aged 17, attempted to rape her, aged 15, at a party in Maryland - a claim he has strenuously denied.
"That's what happens," Patti Davis wrote.
"Your memory snaps photos of the details that will haunt you forever, that will change your life and live under your skin. It blacks out other parts of the story that really don't matter much.
Author Deborah Copaken also defended Prof Ford in the Atlantic, and pointed out that the power Brett Kavanaugh would have as a Supreme Court judge meant it was vital that her allegations were taken seriously.
She described how she had been able to forgive her rapist after he showed deep remorse when she confronted him about it 30 years later.
"But you know what? If he were being confirmed for the Supreme Court; if his decision over what would happen to my daughter's body, should she become inadvertently pregnant, would tip the scales away from Roe; if one of the key aspects of his job as a judge would be to show and to have shown good judgment over the course of his life, you better believe that I, like Ford, would come forward and tell the committee," she wrote.
"Even if it meant going into hiding, as she's had to do. Even if it meant getting death threats, as she's received."
All eyes on Thursday's hearing
Prof Ford has agreed to testify next Thursday before the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is considering whether to confirm Brett Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court.
Many will see her as brave, telling the world about an alleged event she has spent her life trying to forget amid public vilification and death threats.
But she will also face great scepticism, not least from some of the Republican members of the judiciary committee who will question her on Thursday.
One of them, Lindsey Graham, told Fox News Sunday he did not expect her testimony to change his mind.
"What am I supposed to do? Go ahead and ruin this guy's life based on an accusation?" he said. "Unless there's something more, no I'm not going to ruin Judge Kavanaugh's life over this."
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The President Burger is presented with a flourish - on a wooden board, surrounded by circular "dollar fries" and topped with a yellow crust of cheese "hair" which looks as if it might fly away at any moment. | By Guy De LauneyThe World Tonight, BBC Radio 4
As tributes to the US President-elect go, it may not be the most respectful. But it is offered with the affection and gentle humour which it soon becomes apparent is a hallmark of Sevnica, a Slovenian town which just happens to be the place where Donald Trump's first-lady-to-be, Melania, spent most of her childhood.
"We formed the burger so it would resemble Trump a little bit," chuckles Bruno Vidmar, the chef-proprietor of Rondo, a restaurant in the newer part of Sevnica.
"It has hot peppers, because Trump's statements are hot - and it comes with dollar fries because he's a successful entrepreneur."
The presidential tie-in seems to be serving Rondo well: on a weekday morning, the place is buzzing with an early lunch crowd from the nearby furniture and textile factories. Meanwhile a table full of smartly-dressed young women order another of Bruno's culinary creations dreamt up with Sevnica's most famous daughter in mind.
"The 'Melanija' dessert is made out of sponge, then there's a layer of mascarpone and strawberries. It's light enough for a model - and we have it on good authority that Melania loves strawberries."
Sevnica is a small place - so Bruno probably did not have to search long to find an authority on what Melania likes for pudding. Or, at least, what she did like when she was growing up as Melanija Knavs in this town of fewer than 5,000 people.
Bar the addition of a branch of Lidl on the outskirts, little seems to have changed since she left for Slovenia's capital, Ljubljana, as a teenager. The old castle - parts of which date back to the 12th Century - still overlooks Sevnica from its hilltop perch.
The town itself is a tidy place with new and old sections, sitting alongside the River Sava and surrounded by forested hills. The Slovenian Tourist Board suggests that Sevnica is "an excellent destination for those who enjoy picnics and outings, hiking, cycling or fishing".
If the roads had been less icy, it would certainly have been an enjoyable ride through the trees to Gostišče Ob Ribniku, a restaurant and guesthouse next to a small lake. Inside the traditional wooden chalet, you can chat to one of the people who can shed some light on the future first lady's early years.
"We were next door neighbours - and we used to go the same way to school," says Mateja Zalezina, who runs Gostišče Ob Ribniku with her husband, Dejan.
"In the afternoon when we came back we used to hang out in front of the apartment block. Even then she was quite busy, because her mother was a fashion designer and Melania was one of the models for the Jutranjka company that did fashion for kids."
Mateja laughs at the idea that she could have spotted that her neighbour would go a long way from Sevnica - never mind all the way to the White House. But she says that Melania could not help but stand out.
"She was really good at school. She and her sister Ines were studying really hard. After school, we played a game called 'gumi-twist', an elastic band game, and she was really good at that. She had the figure of a model - really long legs - and she always won!"
The restaurant is offering a three-course "Melanija Menu" in honour of Mateja's former playmate. But, like Rondo's eponymous offering, this does not feel like a culinary cash-in, just a low-key tribute, delivered with affection.
"I'm really happy for her - she's achieved the maximum," says Dejan. "I hope everyone in Sevnica will watch the inauguration. We will be here at the restaurant with friends and will raise a glass to them both."
Back in the old town, beneath the castle, Sevnica's mayor Srecko Ocvirk is not planning any special events to mark the start of the Trump era. But he hopes the publicity will bring the town's charms to the attention of tourists.
"The first visitors who came were journalists like you," he admits. "But we're now seeing there are rising numbers of tourists. We're also expecting more organised tour groups after the inauguration. Sevnica and the region will become better known because of this."
At the town's primary school, one of the staff has certainly achieved a degree of local celebrity. Art teacher Nena Bedek was best friends with Melania until the future Mrs Trump left to finish her schooling in Slovenia's capital, Ljubljana.
Now Nena fields questions from her students about her friendship with Sevnica's most famous former resident - and marvels at the different paths their lives have taken.
"It's a 'wow' effect for us and for me," she says.
"She was a reliable girl and a very good friend. But she never wished to stand out - even though she was beautiful and hard-working. She loved to read and draw. She was brought up in a very artistic manner - she knew what was beautiful - due to her mother's job as a fashion designer. I have very fond memories and keep her very close in my heart."
As for the town's various tributes - which include wine, slippers and honey as well as the culinary offerings - Nena believes they are in keeping with the Sevnica spirit.
"They are very sympathetic and sweet - none of them are bad things - and it's also funny. I think it's still within limits - all in all it's sweet and nice."
Rather like Sevnica itself, perhaps.
You can hear Guy De Launey's report from BBC Radio 4's World Tonight via BBC iPlayer.
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Carmarthenshire council has agreed to do away with burial fees for children. | Councillors unanimously voted on Monday to abolish fees for stillborn babies and children up to and including the age of 18 to lessen the financial strain on grieving families.
The decision is in line with many other councils in Wales following a campaign by Swansea East MP Carolyn Harris.
Carmarthenshire council is responsible for the management of Ammanford Public Cemetery.
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How can you foster changes in a sector where being part of an unchanged, old institution is taken as a badge of honour? That is the fundamental problem that faces the new universities minister. In no other area of public life is it so profitable a strategy to market your product as essentially unchanged for centuries. | Chris CookPolicy editor, Newsnight
Jo Johnson, the Universities Minister, has clearly identified that teaching quality is his biggest worry: even at leading universities, students can often feel they have a bad deal. I've written before about how arts students, in particular, sometimes feel they are cross-subsidising the education of their less cultured science-studying contemporaries after the 2012 fee rise (disclaimer: I studied modern history).
He said his aim is to "build a culture where teaching has equal status with research, with great teachers enjoying the same professional recognition and opportunities for career and pay progression as great researchers". That is a serious concern: there really ought to be more professorships and cash for people who devote themselves to high-level teaching. The academy undervalues that skill and worries too much about research.
The Teaching Excellence Framework
To drive that change, Johnson confirmed in a speech to UUK, the university sector umbrella body, that he wants a "a teaching excellence framework that creates incentives for universities to devote as much attention to the quality of teaching as fee-paying students and prospective employers have a right to expect". This was a Conservative manifesto commitment.
That sounds vague, but ears prick up at the words "Teaching Excellence Framework". That is because there is already something called a "Research Excellence Framework": a gigantic beauty parade in which universities show off how good their research work actually is. It is a vast enterprise: the last round took place last year involving submissions from 52,061 academics. The previous round was in 2008.
There is a lot of debate about some of the measures used by the REF to gauge how good work is and what impact research has, but universities play ball. That is because the REF determines how much of around a £1bn a year of "quality-related" research funding universities get. This money is prized, because it comes with no strings attached, and can be used for blue-sky research.
The TEF idea is at its early stages: vice-chancellors are quite pleased that Mr Johnson is taking quite a consultative approach to the sector. But the term "TEF" may be ill-chosen: the minister had to clarify: "I have no intention of replicating the individual and institutional burdens of the REF. I am clear that any external review must be proportionate and light touch, not big, bossy and bureaucratic."
More market
The final product, unlike the REF, may not use the promise of teaching grants money as a lure. It may work through reputation. I suspect institutions are heading for a super-charged version of the KIS - the Key Information Sets - data that universities have to publish for students to judge them by.
You can imagine a situation where students know how much previous students earn three years out, five years out and 10 years out, Feedback on how much they enjoyed the course and what the workload really entails. Maybe we will get that with a gentle Ofsted system for universities on top, where weak provision will be highlighted by external assessors.
Perhaps the system could have input from employers and other academics who have recruited widely, too, on whether they think the course prepares people well for work or further study. This need not be positive: I am aware of two economics courses whose curricula mean some leading universities will not ever take their undergraduates (more on that another day).
Mr Johnson said his plans are a continuation of the previous pro-market reforms - not a change in direction. If these reforms mean more information for students to behave as consumers and rely on, in effect, replacing historic reputations with real information about what they offer, I think that would be a fair summary.
This might lead you to scepticism: after all, we have heard this before. But even if the TEF has no money attached, there's another, subtle way that they could have an effect.
Remember that Mr Johnson's audience today was vice-chancellors, the leaders of the universities. The REF is useful to them because it gives them a structure for managing their research staff. If the TEF is structured well, it could do the same for teaching. Given their concern about institutional prestige and student recruitment, it could give institutions a structure by which they can take teaching more seriously.
We will have to wait and see. A lot is going to depend on how the detail is framed. Raising teaching quality and telling prospective students what they need to know are surprisingly tough issues. They require ministers to find a way to make sure state-subsidised courses are high quality while preserving universities' academic liberty.
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Celebrating 10 years of festive bemusement, bafflement and bewilderment, it is time once again for my Boxing Day Family Puzzler. As regular readers will know, this is the quiz where no-one is expected to know any of the answers. | Mark EastonHome editor@BBCMarkEastonon Twitter
The questions relate to events in 2017 and all the solutions are numbers. Contestants must simply use wisdom and judgement to get as close to the right figure as they can.
There are 20 questions and, to make it fair, each player/team should write their guesses down before revealing them.
One mark for the closest answer and three if by coincidence or brilliance, you get it spot on. Time-sensitive answers are correct as of 23 December.
Good luck.
Answers at the bottom
1) Blue Planet II was the most watched TV programme of 2017, attracting 14.1 million viewers. According to the production team, how many hours did crews spend underwater for each hour-long episode?
2) How many times has Donald Trump tweeted about "fake news" since he became President?
3) The average British worker got an annual bonus of £1,600 in the past financial year. You didn't? Nor did almost any health workers. But it was a prosperous year for bankers. How much did the average City type receive as a bonus?
4) Ed Sheeran's latest album, ÷ (Divide), broke records in 2017. In March, all 16 of its tracks were in the official UK top 20 singles chart. How many times has his album been streamed on Spotify?
5) This year has seen a focus on the continuing gender pay gap. The average working man in Britain earns 18% more per hour than a working woman. According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), what is the difference in West Somerset?
6) The most densely populated part of the UK is inner London, where the population has risen by half a million since 2000 and is now officially estimated to be 3.2 million. What was its population in 1901?
7) New research published this year asked 11-15-year-olds in England if they'd ever had an alcoholic drink. What proportion said they'd never had more than a sip?
8) Paul Pogba is now the highest paid footballer in the Premier League. Dividing his wages by playing time in competitive matches, how much has he cost per minute this season?
9) There's been debate about "shrinkflation" this year - companies shrinking the size of their product but charging the same. In the 1960s, a standard KitKat weighed 35g (1.2oz). What does it weigh today?
10) The 2017 general election returned the highest number of women MPs ever recorded. What proportion of the House of Commons is now female?
11) The world record for the most people riding a single motorbike was broken last month by soldiers from the Indian Army Service Corps (above). The 500cc Royal Enfield cycle was ridden for 1.2km (0.7 miles). How many were aboard?
12) The median average price paid for a house in Knightsbridge, in Westminster, this year was £2.56m. What was the average price paid in the village of Horden, Durham?
13) Sir Bruce Forsyth died this year, aged 89, after a showbiz career spanning 78 years. To some, Brucie will be best remembered as the face of the BBC's Generation Game programme. Including specials, how many editions of the show did he present?
14) A survey this year asked British people if they belonged to any particular religion. What proportion of 18-24 year-olds said Church of England or Anglican?
15) Earlier this month, Donald Trump tried to rebuke the Prime Minister in a tweet but sent it to the wrong Theresa May. Theresa Scrivener (@theresamay) had just six followers when the president sent his message. How many did she have a week later?
16) The Paradise Papers revealed a surprising number of private jets registered in the Isle of Man. How many island residents are there for each PJ?
17) Children in Need raised another record total this year, with over £50m being raised on the night. How much was raised as a result of the first Children in Need broadcast in 1980?
18) The craze of 2017 was the fidget spinner - a toy the restless user can spin in their fingers. A standard model usually retails for just over £1. But the "Caviar Spinner Full Gold" from Russia was more expensive. How much would one of these cost (£)?
19) In 2015, 73% of UK adults used a computer at home. What is the figure now?
20) The US city of Detroit failed to set a new ugly Christmas sweater record this month. Fifteen hundred people gathered at Beacon Park wearing sweaters "clearly displaying Christmas or Hanukkah themes" but Guinness World Record officials said it wasn't enough. How many were needed to break the current record?
Answers:
1) 857
2) 168 (as of 22 December)
3) £14,770
4) 3.1 billion
5) 12% less
6) 4.5 million
7) 56%
8) £5,876 (as of 22 December)
9) 45g
10) 32%
11) 58
12) £29,000
13) 208
14) 3%
15) 1,365
16) 84
17) £1,000,587
18) £12,560
19) 66%
20) 3,474
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A fire at Everton Women's stadium that badly damaged a stand is being investigated as a suspected arson attack. | Fire crews were called to the 2,200-capacity Walton Hall Park ground in Liverpool at about 18:30 GMT on Friday.
They found scaffolding and plastic netting alight and extinguished the blaze in about 30 minutes.
Merseyside Police said it was carrying out a joint investigation with the fire service.
The club said it was assessing the damage but hoped Wednesday's game with Chelsea Women would still go ahead.
Why not follow BBC North West on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram? You can also send story ideas to [email protected]
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Half a kilometre below ground in the Champagne-Ardenne region of eastern France, near the village of Bure, a network of tunnels and galleries is being hacked out of the 160 million-year-old compacted clay rocks. | By Rob BroombyBritish Affairs Correspondent, BBC World Service
The dusty subterranean science laboratory built by the French nuclear waste agency Andra is designed to find out whether this could be the final resting place for most of France's highly radioactive waste, the deadly remains of more than half a century of nuclear energy.
Emerging from the industrial lift there are a series of passageways about the size of an underground rail tunnel.
The walls are reinforced with steel ribs and sprayed with grey concrete and there are huge bore holes drilled 100m into the rock walls which would hold the capsules of radioactive waste. If the scheme gets the final approval, the first waste could be inserted here in around 10 years.
France generates around three quarters of its electricity from nuclear power but despite decades of activity it is no nearer a solution to the perils of nuclear waste.
Many countries agree the hazardous material - some of it at temperatures of 90C - has to be disposed of deep below ground where it can be isolated from all living things for tens of thousands of years whilst the radiation slowly reduces.
Despite advanced schemes in Finland, not a single country worldwide has an operational underground repository.
"What we did first was to demonstrate that safety can be achieved through a repository in this clay formation," says Gerald Ouzounian, the head of international affairs for Andra, told Costing the Earth on BBC Radio 4.
Technical test
Since 2006, they have been developing experiments to prove they can do it technically. Equipment has been set up to simulate the heat the waste will generate and to monitor the impact on the clay.
"There are still risks of water ingress especially from the shafts and the top," says Mr Ouzounian, so they are testing ways to seal the waste using a bentonite clay plug.
French law requires companies to build a retrievable scheme, meaning that for the first few hundred years at least, they can remove the waste again should future generations find a better way to get rid of it.
But it is above ground that the real battle is taking place.
Repository plans have foundered in Britain and America due to local democratic opposition.
Britain copied the Scandinavian model based on voluntarism which allowed local communities to opt in but also built confidence by giving them a right to say no.
The British scheme was set to explore an underground laboratory in Cumbria near the Sellafield nuclear site. The local district council approved the scheme but the strategic authority - the council in Carlisle - blocked it in January 2013, sending the nuclear planners back to the drawing board.
A UK Government white paper to be published in the summer is widely expected to tweak the approval process to curb a county council's influence. The hunt is now on for a new location.
In France, the cash was the answer. They are already spending £50m ($80m / 60m euros) every year to support local community projects and massage consent in what is a sparsely populated and neglected area.
They even arranged the underground laboratory to ensure its two entrances were in different communities so they could pay them both off and ensure wider approval.
"I supported the laboratory from the start and I won't go back on that now," says the local mayor Francois Henri. But he admits that if his community had wanted to block the project there would be little they could do to stop it.
"It is a project which is of national interest. Nobody has the power to stop or to block it," says Gerald Ouzounian.
Resistance movement
He says the nation as a whole has benefited from nuclear power and all the stakeholders will help the government make the final decision.
Local resistance is muted and comes mainly from the pressure group "Bure Zone Libre". Its members who gave me their view but not their names said it had been largely ignored.
"The voice of the people is nothing, they make public debates after decisions," one protestor tells me.
"First stop nuclear energy and after we can talk about the waste."
French law required a national consultation or debate on the waste dump to take place but it was troubled from the start; meetings were disrupted forcing it to conduct its deliberations online.
When the debate finally concluded recently, it recommended slowing down the repository scheme to allow for more scientific tests.
"Having a six-month debate on a project that will last 100,000 years sounds a bit ridiculous," says Ariane Metais, one of a team of facilitators who run the engagement process around the policy.
"For a project with such environmental and ethical consequences, 'it is just not enough'."
If Britain were to copy the French and opt for a deep repository in clay for the vast quantities of UK waste it wouldn't be hard to find, chuckles Gerald Ouzounian.
"You have a lot of suitable (rock) formations in the south east of England," he says.
"The name of the clay is Callovo-Oxfordian which comes from Oxford."
As to whether it would be easy politically to sell a nuclear dump to the citizens of Oxford, he says, is another matter.
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Northern Ireland's Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness has accused the Westminster government of making up Brexit policy as it goes along. | By Gareth GordonBBC News NI Political Correspondent
He was speaking after the first meeting of a new committee made up of the devolved administrations, chaired by Brexit Secretary David Davis.
He said could not understand why more information was not being shared with Stormont, Edinburgh and Cardiff.
First Minister Arlene Foster said it was a first meeting in a long process.
Northern Ireland Secretary of State James Brokenshire denied the government was holding anything back and described it as a constructive meeting.
The committee will meet again in London next month.
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Part of the M1 was closed for several hours after a lorry carrying 44 tonnes of glass bottles overturned. | Highways England said the northbound carriageway reopened at about 11:00 BST following the crash between junction 38 and 39.
The lorry overturned after it collided with a car between the junctions for Haigh and Durkar in West Yorkshire in the early hours.
Police said the male driver of the car sustained minor injuries.
Highways England tweeted that drivers faced delays and diversions were in place.
It said there had been a substantial fuel spillage across the carriageway, with crews working through the night to clear the road.
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Zohra Khaku is on the frontline of the fight against coronavirus. | By Ashitha NageshBBC News
But rather than working on a ward, or delivering food, she and her staff are on the end of a phone line. She runs the Muslim Youth Helpline, which offers counselling for young Muslims in the UK.
She's one of many people in this country dealing with the overwhelming effect the virus has had on black and Asian communities. In a report released on Tuesday, Public Health England (PHE) acknowledged the disproportionate effect the pandemic has had on black, Asian and minority ethnic (Bame) people, including making us more likely to become critically ill, and to die.
Black people are almost four times more likely to die of Covid-19, according to the Office of National Statistics, while Asians are up to twice as likely to die.
Over the past few months, outreach workers like Zohra have been helping those affected by Covid-19 in our communities. The effects have been brutal - not just physical, but psychological, societal and financial. And they hint at why our communities were so vulnerable to the pandemic in the first place.
Zohra says they've had a more than 300% increase in calls, web chats and emails from distressed teens and young adults since the virus arrived in the UK - including a spike on Eid weekend.
The virus, she tells me, has led to many young people becoming isolated - including those who'd never had mental health issues before - while others are struggling with bereavement and grief, after suddenly losing parents and other loved ones.
"We've been going for 19 years, but we've never been as busy as this," she says. The helpline has had calls from young Muslims with mental health conditions, for whom Friday prayers was their only lifeline to the outside world, providing them with a vital support system and connection to their community.
"People's support systems were taken away," she says. "Because we've had Ramadan in lockdown, and people not able to go to Friday prayers, people who had depression or were isolated or lonely before all of this happened - whose only thing they would do with other human beings was once a week on a Friday - they suddenly don't have that any more either."
One call that sticks in her mind was from a 17-year-old girl whose parents had both been taken to hospital with Covid-19.
"Because her parents were in hospital she was looking after a 19-year-old sibling who was self-isolating, and a younger sibling who was severely disabled," Zohra says.
"Issue one was, 'I don't have any money left, please can you point me in the direction of a food bank because I need to be making food for my siblings.' The second thing was that she was doing her A-levels and applying for university, and this was at a time when we weren't sure what was happening with grades. She said that if one teacher in particular ends up giving her a predicted grade instead of her doing an exam, then she doesn't think she's going to get into the university she wants, because she doesn't think her teacher believes in her and is a little bit racist. So she's worried about her future.
"And the third thing was, the doctor from the ward that her mum's in called her just before she called us, and said, 'we don't think your mum's going to make it'. This girl said to us, 'the next phone call I'm expecting is to say that she's died. How do I make sure she has a Muslim burial? I'm only 17, I don't know how to do that.'
"That's just one case, and yet it's so complex. She was on nobody's radar, and if she hadn't reached out for help she'd still be in that situation on her own."
The outbreak's impact on ethnic minorities' mental health has been devastating. The Muslim Youth Helpline, Zohra says, has seen a worrying increase in calls from people saying they're considering suicide.
"We usually get one call about suicide every two weeks, but we get them every night now," Zohra says. "We had one day last week where half of our enquiries were about suicide, and there have been about three or four every night this week."
The PHE report reveals that people living in the most deprived areas of the country are twice as likely as those living in the least deprived areas to be diagnosed with and to die of Covid-19. People of black, Asian and mixed ethnicities are all significantly more likely to live in the most deprived 10% of neighbourhoods, according to government statistics.
Overcrowded households are linked to this deprivation, too. Overcrowding is significantly more prevalent in lower-income households than in wealthier ones - according to one study, it affects 7% of the poorest fifth of households, as opposed to 0.5% of those in the richest fifth.
This poses additional challenges for Ursala Khan, who provides counselling specifically to Bame youths through her work at The What Centre in Dudley. Since the coronavirus outbreak began, privacy has become a huge issue, she says. Many of the teens she works with live with large families in small spaces, meaning they don't have enough privacy to talk on the phone or video-call about mental health.
"Although we do offer alternatives like online counselling or phone counselling, there are still concerns for people trying to access those," Ursala says. "If someone lives in an over-crowded house, it's quite difficult for them to know if they'll have the privacy to speak to us about their mental health."
According to the English Housing Survey, carried out between 2014 and 2017, 30% of Bangladeshi households, 16% of Pakistani households and 12% of black households experienced overcrowding. This was compared with just 2% of white British households.
South Asian families in the UK are also more likely than white families to live in multi-generational households, with up to three generations of the same family living together. This means that school-age children may be living with their grandparents - something outreach workers have said most iterations of the government's guidance haven't taken into account.
Because of this, many of the teens The What Centre works with are scared of going back to school.
"I see a lot of young people concerned about returning to school or college, especially if they live with elderly family members or family members who have pre-existing health conditions," Ursala says.
Some people have been told to go into work when they haven't felt comfortable, too. Zohra gives the example of a young man who called the helpline after losing his job, after refusing to go into an office he deemed unsafe.
"We had a few cases of people saying 'I'm not sure if it's safe to go to work, but my employer's making me', and even before the lockdown we had calls about things like PPE," she says.
"Early on in the outbreak, there was one guy who said he got fired for refusing to go in… but he wrote in a few weeks later and told us: 'You know what, I have no job, but at least I'm alive - and I believe that if I'd continued going into work I wouldn't be'."
The high risk of 'essential' work
The risk is partly because of the kind of work that many black and Asian people in the UK do. South Asians are significantly more likely to work in the NHS, for example. In England nearly 21% of NHS staff are from ethnic minority backgrounds, but they only make up about 14% of the general population.
At the same time, black and Asian people are also more likely to be in insecure work - such as gig economy jobs, bogus self-employment and zero-hours contracts - than white people with the same qualifications. Many of these jobs, such as delivery drivers, taxi drivers and supermarket work, are now considered "essential".
Research from the Trade Union Congress (TUC) last year found that ethnic minority workers are a third more likely to be in insecure work. A report released last month by Carnegie UK Trust, UCL and Operation Black Vote also found that Bame millennials in particular were 47% more likely to be on notoriously unstable "zero-hours" contracts.
Because of this, black and Asian people are disproportionately more likely to have been "key workers" in front-line jobs during this pandemic - whether that's caring for patients on a Covid ward, or delivering takeaways. Rajesh Jayaseelan, for example, was an Uber driver in London who died of coronavirus in April. Days before he died, he was evicted from his home and forced to sleep in his car because his landlord had deemed him high-risk, on account of his job.
Healthcare workers have also highlighted racism and workplace discrimination as major issues during the pandemic.
Last month, Birmingham Community Healthcare NHS Trust's head of equality Carol Cooper told the Nursing Times that black and Asian nurses felt they were being "targeted" for work on Covid wards - more so than their white colleagues.
"They feel that there is a bias," she told the publication. "The same bias that existed before, they are feeling is now influencing their being appointed - and they are terrified. Everybody is terrified."
In another survey last month, carried out by ITV News, about 50% of doctors and healthcare staff who responded explicitly blamed "systemic discrimination" at work for the disproportionate number of deaths among Bame NHS staff. One in five healthcare workers said they had personally experienced racism - in response, NHS England said protecting staff was its "top priority" and that it had asked trusts to risk-assess Bame workers.
So for now it's impossible to pin down whether the higher death rate among Bame people is down to sociology or biology, Michael Hamilton from Ubele, a social enterprise working with Britain's African diaspora, tells me.
According to PHE, this is "complex" - but in essence, it's both. Socio-economic inequality means we're more likely to catch the virus, while our biology means we're more likely to die.
Ubele has set up a fund to help people hold memorial services for their loved ones after the crisis. It is also leading the call for a full independent, non-governmental inquiry into the deaths of black and ethnic minority people of coronavirus.
So what, in Michael's opinion, is causing us to die at higher rates than our white British counterparts? "Clearly there are multiple reasons, and I think I am personally, genuinely in a place to say at this point that I don't know," Michael says - adding that jumping to conclusions without all of the information is "the worst thing we can do".
"I think people are going to find different answers depending on their own speciality," he says. "We might find that there is some biology. The socio-economic stuff, that's my bread and butter, so I can recite that. But I want to keep looking, because I genuinely don't know - but I believe that we do have to know."
How systemic inequality affects our health
Dr Enam Haque is a GP in Manchester, but he also works with two Bame outreach groups - one that aims to educate patients, and another that works with Bame healthcare workers. He says he and his Bame colleagues have been "terrified" of the virus.
"It's quite scary as a GP from a Bangladeshi background myself, when I've seen Bame colleagues dying disproportionately," he tells me. The virus is very close to home for him - his uncle, Dr Moyeen Uddin, was a cardiologist in the city of Sylhet in Bangladesh, and was the first doctor in his country to die of Covid-19.
It's affecting his patients, too: "Many of our patients are staying away and not contacting us with health issues. My fear is that a lot of chronic conditions, lots of worrying conditions are not being diagnosed because people are scared - particularly, I've observed, from the ethnic minority population - that any kind of access to healthcare will make them exposed to Covid-19."
What about pre-existing conditions?
Scientists have been looking into whether certain pre-existing medical conditions could be playing a part.
Black and South Asian people are significantly more likely than white people to have Type 2 diabetes and hypertension (that is, high blood pressure), two conditions known to be high-risk.
The PHE report reveals that the proportion of both black and Asian people who've died of Covid-19 with diabetes was higher than white patients. As well as these two conditions, a recent study from Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge has found a link between lower levels of vitamin D and higher Covid-19 mortality rates in 20 European countries. Vitamin D deficiency is particularly common among black and Asian people in the UK and other countries with limited sunshine.
I ask Dr Haque what, in his opinion, could be the reason we're so much more likely to become critically ill, or even die. He tells me that although there are medical reasons for people from Bame backgrounds to be more vulnerable, biology doesn't explain everything.
"It's a fact that people from Bame backgrounds, particularly from South Asia, are more likely to have diabetes, heart disease and high blood pressure, all of which make them more at-risk," he says. "But the bigger issue, in my opinion, are the social determinants of health."
By this, he means the economic and social conditions that make some people more vulnerable to health conditions - in this case, to becoming critically ill from a deadly virus - than others.
"There's something that has disadvantaged our population and has put us at risk," Dr Haque continues. "It's the inequality in society - there's so much more deprivation, people in our communities earn lower wages, and we have more people working in frontline jobs as well.
"As well as healthcare workers we have a lot of bus drivers, taxi drivers… they may not have access to PPE in these jobs either, so they're putting themselves at risk while serving the community. That's a major factor right there."
The problem, Michael Hamilton from Ubele says, is the people we're relying on the most in this pandemic are the ones who are the most exposed - and yet, by virtue of being considered "low-skilled", they are rendered invisible.
"I think one of the things we have to do - the biggest lesson I think we have to take from this - is to look at what we value, and who we value, and how we show them value," Michael says.
"It's our ability to not value certain types of people that has allowed this to happen."
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Hundreds of boxes of stolen Hubba Bubba and chewing gum have been recovered from a lorry following a tip-off. | West Midlands Police told the Thames Valley force the lorry was "heading south" into the area on Monday following a theft from another vehicle.
Roads policing officers found the lorry, which had false plates, at a petrol station off the M40 near Oxford.
The driver was arrested on suspicion of drug-driving, theft and having no insurance or MOT.
The passenger was arrested on suspicion of theft and possession of cannabis. The case has been handed back to the West Midlands force.
A "few hundred" boxes of the gum were found in the back, police said.
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The Conservative Party is gathering in Birmingham for its annual autumn conference, which will be Theresa May's first as leader and prime minister. Here's a guide to what's happening and some of the highlights. | Sunday 2 October
09:00: Andrew Marr: Prime Minister Theresa May is expected to appear on the BBC show and other media outlets during the morning
14:00: Conference opening: The conference will officially be opened by Conservative Party chairman Patrick McLoughlin and the party's West Midlands mayoral candidate, Andy Street
Global Britain: Making a success of Brexit: Theresa May will make her first speech to the conference, on Britain's exit from the European Union.
Speeches will also be made by:
16.45: An opportunity for party members to meet the chairman, Patrick McLoughlin
Monday 3 October
10.30: Economy: Chancellor Philip Hammond will make his keynote speech to the conference. Also due to speak:
14.30: Economy: Speeches from Culture, Media and Sport Secretary Karen Bradley, Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Secretary Andrea Leadsom and International Trade Secretary Liam Fox
16.30: Preparation for 2017 elections: A campaigning session focusing on next year's local and mayoral elections in England, Scotland and Wales.
Tuesday 4 October
10.30: Celebrating the union: Speeches from
11.00: Speeches from Defence Secretary Michael Fallon, Justice Secretary Liz Truss and Home Secretary Amber Rudd
14.30: Speeches from Work and Pensions Secretary Damian Green, Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt and Education Secretary Justine Greening
16.30: Party members discuss why they joined the Conservative Party
Wednesday 5 October
10.00: A party that works for everyone: Contributions from Conservative MPs
10.30: Speeches from House of Lords leader Baroness Evans and Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson
Speech by Prime Minister Theresa May
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Pawel Relowicz has been convicted of raping and murdering student Libby Squire. But she was not the first woman he targeted. In the months before her death, he prowled the streets of Hull committing a string of increasingly serious sex crimes. His first known victim has described her encounter with the peeping Tom who became a killer. | By Pritti MistryBBC News
Sarah (not her real name) was sharing an intimate moment with her boyfriend.
It was a July evening in 2017, and the window of her downstairs bedroom at the front of a shared student house was opened slightly. Suddenly, the room brightened with the light from an outside street lamp, and she looked up to see the "terrifying" sight of a man's hands and face poking through the curtains.
Seconds later, Sarah's then partner also turned to look at the window. This startled the unwanted spectator, who fled. Three hours later, at about 04:00 BST, her housemate returned home from a shift at a local bar to find a used condom and a pair of worn, black lacy knickers hanging on the front door handle.
The man, she now knows, was Pawel Relowicz. This episode of voyeurism was the first in a catalogue of escalating sexual crimes he committed in the 18 months leading up to the disappearance of Libby Squire.
His trial at Sheffield Crown Court heard he had stolen sex toys and underwear from student houses and masturbated in front of women in public. A used condom and a pair of knickers - described as a "calling card" by prosecutors - were left at more than one crime scene. In one case, they were discovered beside a toy belonging to a victim's child.
But, in the earlier stages of his offending, it seemed that few took the potential threat seriously. Sarah, whose name has been changed for legal reasons, said the reaction from those around her to what had happened initially led her to feel as though she was "blowing it out of proportion".
"I don't think my boyfriend took it very seriously, my housemates didn't take it seriously. I think they just thought it was funny… but I didn't find it funny at all," she says.
"Everyone else had played it down... [but] I knew something was very wrong.
"I always had a feeling that this was going to be somebody who wasn't going to do it just the once."
The police response when she first reported the issue further compounded the feeling. She was "unimpressed" when officers arrived a day later to take fingerprints only after her mum - herself a former policewoman - nudged them.
Sarah's experience was perhaps unsurprising, according to criminology professor David Wilson. Traditionally, voyeurism is not viewed as a serious crime but as the subject of mirth and merriment, he says.
"It wasn't so long ago that peeping Toms would feature on so-called humorous postcards that you would send to family and friends when you are visiting the seaside. Culturally we've not taken the behaviour of voyeurism seriously for a very long period of time. There's a tendency to think of the peeping Tom almost as an insignificant joke-like character, whereas in fact they cause a great deal of harm and hurt.
"They are predatory sexual offenders and should be treated as such."
Sarah was haunted by Relowicz's crime against her. Within days, she had the locks changed and a small CCTV camera installed with help from her parents. But that did not stop her from feeling "absolutely petrified", particularly when she was alone in the house. At one point, she recalls keeping a set of gardening shears under her bed "just in case".
"I'd lock my bedroom door at night and I wouldn't even leave to go to the toilet. I had a summer job and I ended up quitting and going back to my family home because I couldn't be in that house. And then when I went back in September that's when it started up again. It became this massive fear."
Sarah says she remained "very, very frightened for nearly a year". She recalls several times experiencing a sudden "intense burst of fear" when walking at night.
As she tried to leave behind the nightmare of Relowicz's voyeuristic episode, he continued to offend undetected. He watched through the blinds of a woman's home as she came out of the shower, spied on another as she got dressed and watched on as one danced around her living room in leggings and a bra. The same victim also reported seeing Relowicz's hands coming through her letterbox less than a month later. Voyeurism turned into burglary and, in one case, he stole three sex toys from a house, ignoring high-value items such as laptops.
In January 2019, weeks before Ms Squire's disappearance, he was seen masturbating in the street on two separate occasions. The women who witnessed it said he appeared untroubled at being spotted.
Up to now, the crimes were not being linked. But Sarah, and others, would be hit with another bombshell a year and a half after she first encountered Relowicz.
News that a University of Hull philosophy undergraduate had been reported missing on 1 February 2019 sparked a huge search around the city for Libby Squire. Seven days after the student, from High Wycombe, was last seen in a drunken and vulnerable state, Polish national Pawel Relowicz, a married father of two, was arrested on suspicion of her abduction. Details of his previous crimes soon began to emerge.
Sarah says she had an initial reaction of "disbelief" when she learned of Relowicz's arrest but wasn't surprised there were other victims of his serial offending, including those he followed home and stared at through windows while they were either naked or in their underwear. She took some small comfort in knowing she "wasn't just neurotic and making something up", but "felt sick reading about him".
On 20 March 2019, the worst was confirmed. Libby Squire's body was found in the Humber Estuary.
"I was disturbed by how quickly it seemed to escalate," Sarah says. "Things like masturbating in front of people, following them home, I mean that stuff's terrifying. That's far worse than what he did at mine. I just felt terrible for these women. It was just gradually getting worse."
Relowicz was jailed in August 2019 for eight charges including voyeurism, outraging public decency and burglary. The 26-year-old was already serving a five years and eight-month jail term for these offences as he faced trial for Ms Squire's murder. The judge who jailed Relowicz said he was a potentially dangerous individual motivated by "perverted sexual deviancy".
At his murder trial, Relowicz would tell the jury of five men and seven women he was not the "phantom killer in tight trousers" portrayed by prosecutors, but a hard-working family man whose crimes were the result of a fetish driven by problematic sexual urges.
But according to Prof Wilson, Relowicz's description "trivialises what he's done". The criminologist believes he showed signs of "predatory behaviours of a sexual offender" and a more accurate term would be paraphilia - a condition characterised by perverted or irregular sexual desires. He says Relowicz's actions were about having power over his targets.
"It's not about him trying to express himself sexually because he's got some kind of fetish," he says. "He wants to be powerful and he gets off, as it were, simply when he sees the reaction of people watching him behaving in the way that's been described [in court]. He wants somebody to be shocked and annoyed and scared because that ultimately makes him feel more than he actually is."
Prof Wilson says the problem "didn't just start last month or six months ago". "This problem has been in Relowicz's background for years and it has been allowed to go untreated," he says.
He says there are interventions to tackle the kinds of behaviours mentioned during the case, but it is "something that needs to be dealt with very, very quickly", preferably during puberty.
Sarah's experience still plays on her mind.
"I get these thoughts - should I have done something, should I have gone after him? Could we have made the police take it more seriously? All these things go through your head. But you know ultimately there's nothing you could've done really."
"That makes me think: 'How many people were either embarrassed or blamed themselves and never actually reported it?'"
Anthea Sully, chief executive of White Ribbon UK, says people should "call out behaviour that they think is wrong". The charity, which works to prevent violence against women, encourages people to report apparent low-level behaviour, and wants to raise awareness of the mechanisms for doing so.
"We know that people will often dismiss it as not being important and people don't recognise that it's harmful, but it's also something that can escalate," she says. "So it's absolutely essential that we take these things seriously."
It is important to remember, says Prof Wilson, that "sexual offenders are upstanding members of the public as much as they are the so-called dirty old man in a raincoat."
"If we could identify a sexual offender because they had horns on their head and a long pointed tail it would be much easier to identify a sexual predator, but unfortunately they don't," he adds.
Humberside Police said there were very few opportunities to link Relowicz's earlier crimes until his arrest as there was "no clear pattern of offending" and a large gap between offences. With regard to Sarah's complaint, the force said it was satisfied "a proportionate investigation with the information available at the time" took place and it had treated her report "with the appropriate level of seriousness". Det Supt Martin Smalley said different crime scenes yielded different types of evidence and it was "not possible to compare and match one against the other".
"In some cases it was fingerprints, in another, it was a footprint and in others it was DNA," he says. "Despite a number of offences being committed, officers were unable to connect these to each other or to Pawel Relowicz until a much later date." The force added that "officers acted quickly" to identify, locate and apprehend Relowicz within days of Ms Squire's disappearance.
Sarah had no idea what Relowicz would go on to do. She describes learning about Libby Squire as "a wake-up call". "This poor woman who'd struggled throughout her teens, managed to get to uni, had friends, had a good life and it was just snuffed out prematurely. I just found it deeply upsetting. I went out for a walk and I just cried, I just felt so sorry for her and her family and everyone and it's just horrible," she says.
"And to think this man two years earlier, maybe months earlier..."
With Relowicz convicted, Sarah's feelings about her own experience are complicated, and she says thoughts of forgiveness are made harder by knowing that he physically harmed another woman.
"I do hope he gets the support he needs but at the same time... there was no excuse for what he did," she says. "It's damaged people… he's scared people in their own homes and no matter what the extent of his problem, that's unacceptable."
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Small weddings were given the go-ahead to start again last week in certain circumstances in Wales, but what is the reality of a getting married now?
One couple from Cardiff organised their wedding on Saturday in just a few days. | As she stood huddled in the rain and wind outside the church in her wedding dress, it was not exactly the arrival at her big day Elizabeth Facer had dreamed of.
The minister about to preside over her wedding was delivering a health and safety briefing to her and her fiance Ian Choi, which they had to listen to before they entered the building.
Also standing 2m away were Elizabeth's parents and a registrar - the only other people allowed to attend the tiny wedding held in Penrhyndeudraeth, near Porthmadog, Gwynedd, on Saturday.
Around the corner, her brother, sister, her sister's fiance and their son were ready to watch the ceremony broadcast on the internet.
Theirs was one of the first nuptials held in Wales since the restrictions over weddings were eased last week.
For Elizabeth, 22, and Ian, 23, it was a victory - even though their original wedding on 20 June was due to have 300 guests.
The couple started a petition urging the Welsh Government to allow small weddings to go ahead as restrictions around the pandemic eased.
"Once we realised it was going to have to be a socially distant wedding I went through all of the stuff in my head of like, it's not going to be all of us at my parents' house, it's not going to be how I had imagined it," said Elizabeth.
"And I focused on the positive things."
Elizabeth, who is doing an MA at Cardiff University, spoke to the register office in Gwynedd, as well as the minister who would marry them and managed to book the wedding for the following weekend.
"It almost didn't happen," she said.
"Right at the last minute they almost stopped it because they hadn't had any official guidelines even though the regulations allowed it."
Some local authorities in Wales said they would start registering church weddings again, while others were waiting for further guidance from the Welsh and UK governments about resuming register office weddings.
Anywhere not a register office or place or worship - such as hotels, castles and stadiums still - cannot host weddings despite having a licence.
Because attending a wedding is listed as a "reasonable excuse" for travelling more than five miles from home, Elizabeth and Ian were still able to have their wedding at her home church in north Wales - Capel Fron.
Ian's parents live in Hong Kong and had planned to fly over for the original wedding, but there was no way of them being there this time.
And the couple's reunion with Elizabeth's family was also difficult.
"I could tell it was really hard for my mum not to be able to hug us," said Elizabeth. "It was really hard to try to stay composed and not encourage her to hug."
Elizabeth's parents, who live close to the church, decorated it for the couple before Wednesday, because it had to be empty for 72 hours before the wedding to ensure it was sterile and safe for the big day.
And because they wanted to keep to tradition by staying apart the night before the wedding, Elizabeth stayed in a friend's house, which was empty, while Ian ended up sleeping in her parents' outhouse.
On the morning of the wedding, there were no hairdresser or make-up appointments for Elizabeth - instead she got ready alone.
"When I was getting ready, I was still thinking about the positives of it," she said.
Social distancing meant the couple drove to church together, with Elizabeth's parents and sister all in separate cars.
Just six people were allowed in the ceremony - Elizabeth's parents as witnesses, the minister and the registrar.
It also meant Elizabeth had to enter the church through the fire exit in the toilets, while trying to keep 2m from her father who was walking her down the aisle.
Ian said: "It was really special just seeing her come down the aisle after all this. It was quite surreal.
"I still can't quite believe that it happened, because for such a long time we weren't even allowed to think about when we were going to do it, it just all happened so quickly the process of it being allowed, and getting everything up and running in less than a week.
"It was like a massive, massive relief."
With no best man, Ian had their rings, and his parents did readings via webcam from Hong Kong.
And because they were not allowed to sing due to the virus, recorded hymns were played on a laptop.
After the registrar carried out the legal part of the ceremony, she left, and a photographer took her place.
As they left the church they were greeted by the rest of Elizabeth's family, who had been watching from a nearby railway station.
The family went in separate cars to drive to a nearby industrial estate for the wedding "reception" - a picnic in which they all sat in their car boots as it was raining.
The newly-weds then drove straight back to Cardiff where they had a microwave lasagne and garlic bread as their wedding night meal.
As for the honeymoon, that is off the cards for now.
Where can weddings take place in Wales?
There have been two weddings in Gwynedd since the easing of restrictions, with the first set to take place in Rhondda Cynon Taff and Flintshire later this week.
They can also take place in religious buildings in the Vale of Glamorgan, with the first scheduled for Anglesey later this month.
Services have not yet restarted in Monmouthshire, Conwy, Bridgend, Cardiff, Pembrokeshire, Caerphilly, Swansea or Denbighshire.
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Mohammed Emwazi, the British jihadist who featured in beheading videos by so-called Islamic State and became known as "Jihadi John", is dead, according to, amongst others, Barack Obama and IS's own publication. | Martin RosenbaumFreedom of information specialist
On the other hand, maybe he isn't dead, according to the University of Westminster in London, where he was a student, and the Information Commissioner's Office.
This question is at the heart of a freedom of information (FOI) dispute between the university and the BBC. The Information Commissioner has now backed the university.
After this was reported, the commissioner's office issued further justification for its stance, arguing that there is no definite proof that the Mohammed Emwazi who attended the university is the same one identified as "Jihadi John".
This stems from an FOI request made in February by my BBC colleague Chris Vallance, a Radio 4 reporter, who asked the university for all the electronic records it had about Emwazi.
He wanted to see whether they would shed light on his past character, any contact with the authorities, and how and why he became radicalised.
'Deeply inflammatory'
It has been widely reported that Emwazi studied computer science at Westminster from 2006 to 2009. Part of his academic file had already been leaked and published in the media.
The university sent Chris copies of some emails from their vice-chancellor's office referring to the discovery that "Jihadi John" had been one of their students, and the resulting "intensive global media interest" and "deeply inflammatory external environment".
But they refused to disclose his personal records on the grounds that he could still be alive, despite the fact that the US military said it had killed Emwazi in a drone strike in the Syrian city of Raqqa in November 2015.
Emwazi featured prominently in several gruesome recordings of beheadings of captured Western hostages. He was not a significant military commander within the IS group, but his role in the propaganda videos made him an important symbolic target.
In December, President Obama named Emwazi as one of a number of leaders of the IS group or operatives that the US had been "taking out" and "removed".
Obituary
The American assertion has been backed by UK-based Syrian human rights activists who said they were in contact with sources in Raqqa.
And in January 2016, the IS group itself apparently confirmed his death, publishing an obituary of Emwazi in their online magazine, Dabiq.
However, all this evidence was considered insufficient by the university management, who maintained: "To date, no authoritative confirmation or evidence has been given to the university, or made public, that the student known to the University of Westminster as Mohammed Emwazi is now dead.
"Without any firm evidence or authoritative official confirmation that Mohammed Emwazi is definitely deceased, the university maintains that the information requested remains bound by data protection restrictions."
Under the Data Protection Act, personal information can be disclosed only where this would be processing it "fairly", but the law applies to "living individuals" only.
The Information Commissioner's official guidance stresses that it cannot be used to limit the publication of information about the deceased.
'Distress and upset'
Following an appeal by the BBC, the university's stance has now been backed by the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO). It has issued a decision stating that "the commissioner agrees with the university's approach".
The ICO initially refused to clarify the reasons for its ruling, but later released additional material which it had kept secret in a confidential annex to its published decision.
This states: "There is no way of the university knowing for absolute definite that the Mohammed Emwazi it may hold records for is the same Mohammed Emwazi named in the request and the same person responsible for the crimes reported."
The suggestion that they are the same person has been generally accepted and widely reported in the media by the BBC and others.
An ICO spokesperson said: "The FOI Act is designed to promote transparency and openness, but is also balanced to avoid the inappropriate release of personal information. Anyone who is not happy with a decision can appeal to the information rights tribunal."
A University of Westminster spokesperson said: "We are complying with our legal obligations and the ICO decision confirms that this is the correct approach."
The university responded to the revelation last year that "Jihadi John" had been a former student by commissioning an independent report that examined how it tackled Islamic extremism within the student population.
The university has since instituted a new policy on external speakers, and created a programme of extended pastoral care and enhanced staff training.
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It's an unusual sort of speech.
| Nick RobinsonPolitical editor
This morning David Cameron says, in effect: "I'm in charge of the country. I have already promised radical welfare cuts which have yet to be implemented or examined for their impact but here's the sort of thing I'd want to do in three years time if you re-elect me without the need to rely on those pesky Liberals - but don't push me on the details yet."
So, why is he doing it?
There will be many theories, but here's just a few. It cheers up Tories in the week they're being asked to stomach Lib Dem plans to reform the Lords without a referendum; it gives Conservatives a way to highlight what they'd do if only they could; it helps get the Tory press back on side after the so-called omnishambles Budget and it poses real problems for Labour just as the housing benefit cap did.
There is, though, one reason above all others which the Westminster village too easily forgets and is the key to all the rest - it's popular.
A recent YouGov poll for Prospect magazine suggested a startling 74% of the public - including 59% of Labour voters and 51% of those on the lowest incomes (below £10,000) - thought that welfare payments should be cut. The most popular cuts are for, you guessed it, the unemployed and never-married single parents. The least popular cuts are for the elderly.
The prime minister is using his position to spark a debate which he already knows he's won. Asked about the specifics he will, no doubt, do as Iain Duncan Smith did this morning and say "these are the details... that's the challenge... we'll have to be careful ...etc"
One important note. David Cameron was careful to say - in the advance text we've seen so far - that he'd keep his promise to pensioners not to means-test their benefits, but Iain Duncan Smith made it absolutely clear that that promise lasts just for this Parliament - in other words not for the period the speech is talking about.
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In China's Hubei province, over a dozen cities are in lockdown in the hope of preventing further cases of the new Coronavirus. And Western countries are putting people returning from Wuhan, the city at the centre of the outbreak, into enforced isolation for up to two weeks. | By Sophie WilliamsBBC News
Quarantine has long been used to prevent the spread of diseases.
The term itself comes from the first known example of the isolation method.
As the Black Death raged through Europe in the 14th century, Venice enforced a rule where ships had to anchor for 40 days before crew and passengers were allowed to come ashore. The waiting period was named "quarantino", which derives from the Italian for 40.
It's unclear where exactly the 40 days concept came from, said Mark Harrison, Professor of the History of Medicine at the University of Oxford. One possibility is that it was a biblical reference - the idea of spending 40 days and 40 nights in the wilderness as Jesus is said to have done.
Over time, the duration of quarantine has been shortened, but it remains key to limiting disease outbreaks across the globe.
In the UK, one of the most famous examples is the English village of Eyam's self-imposed quarantine during the bubonic plague. Between September and December 1665, 42 residents of the Derbyshire village died.
In June 1666, the newly appointed rector Willliam Mompesson decided the village should be quarantined.
He told his parishioners that the village must be enclosed with no-one allowed in, or out. He said the Earl of Devonshire had offered to send food and supplies if they agreed to be quarantined.
The rector told villagers he would do everything in his power to alleviate their suffering and remain with them.
That August, the village saw a peak of five or six deaths a day - but hardly anyone broke the cordon. Over time, the number of cases fell and by November the disease was gone. The lockdown had worked.
Nowadays, most quarantines are imposed by governments or health bodies.
"When quarantine measures are introduced, they're not just based on medical calculations about whether or not they're going to be effective in stopping or slowing the advance of the infectious disease," said Mr Harrison.
"You take measures such as quarantine in order to meet expectations of other governments, but also to reassure your own population."
In San Francisco in 1900, Chinese immigrants were quarantined after a Chinese man was found dead in a hotel. It was later confirmed that he had died of the plague. Concerned, police officers strung rope and barbed wire around a section of Chinatown. Residents were not allowed to come in or out, and only police and health officials were allowed to cross the barrier.
During World War One, about 30,000 sex workers were quarantined amid fears about the number of rising sexually transmitted diseases. They were allowed to leave once it was confirmed they no longer had STDs.
Mr Harrison says the Sars epidemic of 2002-3 started a new era in infectious disease control.
During the outbreak, people who had been exposed to the virus were quarantined. The Chinese government threatened to execute or jail anyone who was found to breach quarantine rules and spread the contagion.
The disease reinforced lessons about the importance of working with other countries during a public health crisis.
When the syndrome spread from China to the Canadian city of Toronto, 44 people were killed and several hundred more infected.
About 7,000 people in Canada were placed in isolation to stop the spread of Sars.
"During the outbreak in 2003 when it started spreading to other countries, quarantine of various kinds was used extensively. The use of those measures of containment was credited with stopping the pandemic becoming worse than it could have been," said Mr Harrison.
"One of the lessons that people drew was a victory for old-style public health methods."
As China continues with the traditional method of quarantine to respond to the new coronavirus, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has praised the country for "taking extraordinary measures in the face of what is an extraordinary challenge".
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On Sunday night, in his television address on the San Bernardino shootings and the "broader threat of terrorism", President Barack Obama sought to tell Americans what he was doing, what Congress should do and what the nation shouldn't do. | By Anthony ZurcherNorth America reporter
It was a tall order for a 12-minute speech, which reflects the complicated, fraught-with-peril position in which the president currently finds himself.
He was elected to help disentangle the nation from a Middle East war, and now a majority of the American public seems to support a new military incursion into that same region.
He ran for office as the face of a more diverse, inclusive country, and yet some of the Republicans who hope to replace him have called for a religious test for Syrian refugees, racial profiling of Muslim Americans and closing down "any place where radicals are being inspired", in the words of Florida Senator Marco Rubio.
'New phase' of terrorism
Mr Obama has claimed that the US is winning the war against al-Qaeda and compared its spin-off groups to a "JV team" - a term for the squad of lesser athletes in a high school sport programme. But a series of ideologically inspired attacks on US soil, along with the bloodshed in Paris last month, has Americans increasingly concerned.
For the first time Mr Obama acknowledged that the nation faces a pattern of violence inspired by "a perverted interpretation of Islam that calls for war against America and the West".
He drew a line connecting the shootings at Fort Hood, a Texas military base, the Boston Marathon bombings, an attack on an Army recruiting station in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and the recent bloodshed in San Bernardino and said it represents a "new phase" of terrorist threat to the US.
"As we've become better at preventing complex multifaceted attacks like 9/11," he said, "terrorists turn to less complicated acts of violence like the mass shootings that are all too common in our society."
Lax gun laws
That reference to the recent strings of US mass shootings - at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado and a church in South Carolina, for instance - was not simply made in passing, as would be clear later in the president's speech.
After outlining the steps his administration was already taking to defeat the so-called Islamic State (IS), he spoke of what he sees as a real threat to US security - the nation's lax gun laws.
He said individuals on the federal "no-fly" list, which prevents suspected militants from boarding US aircraft, should be prohibited from purchasing guns.
"What could possibly be the argument for allowing a terrorist suspect to buy a semiautomatic weapon?" he asked. "This is a matter of national security."
More than that, however, Mr Obama called for Congress to pass legislation making it harder for every American to obtain "powerful assault weapons, like the ones that were used in San Bernardino".
The president has often urged greater regulation of firearms, but now he is explicitly making the case in terms of safeguarding the nation against threats both at home and inspired abroad.
"The fact is that our intelligence and law-enforcement agencies, no matter how effective they are, cannot identify every would-be mass shooter," he said, "whether that individual was motivated by ISIL or some other hateful ideology".
Mr Obama's call comes the day after the New York Times issued a rare front-page editorial in which it proposed a ban on "military-style" semi-automatic rifles, prompting outcry from gun-rights groups.
One conservative commentator, Erick Erickson, tweeted a picture of the newspaper, riddled with bullet holes. The president's proposal will likely receive a similarly hostile reception.
"Millions of Americans have chosen to protect themselves and their families by purchasing a firearm," Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz said in a statement released shortly before the president's speech. "This is their right; indeed protecting their families is their obligation."
'Coming together'
Mr Obama also asked Congress to provide him with a direct authorisation for the use of force to fight IS and for more thorough screening of visitors who currently enter the US without a visa to see if they've been to war zones, but those requests will likely be overshadowed by the gun-control issue - and questions about Mr Obama's overall IS strategy.
Adding fuel to the fire is the fact that the president's speech comes in the middle of a heated battle among Republicans for their party's presidential nomination.
For the better part of a year, many candidates on the right have been warning that IS presents a pressing national security threat that is being underestimated by the current administration.
After the Paris attacks and, in particular, after the San Beranardino shootings, some of the Republicans who hope to replace Mr Obama in the White House are claiming vindication.
"We need to come to grips with the idea that we are in the midst of the next world war," New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, another presidential aspirant, said on Friday.
Mr Obama acknowledged the reality of the US electoral calendar toward the end of his Sunday night speech, after urging Americans not to "turn against one another" or frame the conflict as a war between the US and Islam.
"Even in this political season, even as we properly debate what steps I and future presidents must take to keep our country safe, let's make sure we never forget what makes us exceptional," he said.
"Let's not forget that freedom is more powerful than fear. That we have always met challenges, whether war or depression, natural disasters or terrorist attacks, by coming together around our common ideals as one nation and one people."
Donald Trump offered his brusque reply to the speech shortly after its conclusion.
"Is that all there is?" tweeted the current Republican front-runner. "We need a new president - FAST!"
Until the US presidential race concludes in just under 11 months, national unity is going to be hard to find.
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David White, 16, from Shawhead in Dumfries, undecided voter | Whatever the end result, 16- and 17-year-olds will make history simply by taking part in next week's Scottish independence vote. The referendum is the first time that under-18s anywhere in the UK have had the franchise on a major matter of state. Here we hear about the lives of those whose vote will influence the future of Scotland.
Shawhead is a small village with a T-junction and a few houses dotted about. It's mainly farming but there is a recycling plant down the road. We were never bored growing up here. We just built things. We made a boat out of Duck Tape that actually works. We were building sluice-boxes the other day to go gold-panning in the hills.
We spent holidays in the forest building dens and I have a garden up in the woods. I make a lot of silver jewellery as a small business in my shed and sell it to people I know or as birthday presents.
England is local here. Quite often I'll go to Carlisle for shopping. If there was any border control that could be quite a pain. I have relatives down there too.
I'm still undecided but I'm leaning towards "No" as more of an emotional thing.
I've read the White Paper and I've been in lots of debates. I've come down to it that you could pretty much be independent and be economically fine but it's more about if you feel like you want to be Scottish on its own or part of Britain.
Lots of 16-year-olds are not that bothered about it but there are a lot that are delighted to have the vote.
Brandon Ross, 16, from Cumbernauld, "Yes" voter
I have looked after my mum since I was 12, which means I am a young carer. It's a really good opportunity and gives you a lot of confidence. You can feel so proud, to say you look after somebody and you are one of the most important things in their life.
I write song lyrics when I get angry. Since my dad left, I find writing them really helps. You get into the words and you know what the singer was meaning when they wrote it. I have left school now and am going to college to do mechanics. I was getting grief from the teachers for being off all the time. They didn't understand that I had to look after my mum. They automatically think that I can't be bothered coming to school and you start to feel really upset and it makes you feel really low.
I would just like Scotland to be a wealthy country, so there are plenty of jobs. There are a lot of people out of work, and not able to afford their houses and that, just now. Other countries have gone independent and done okay, so I don't see why Scotland shouldn't do the same.
Amy-Jo Randalls ,17, from Kirriemuir, "No" voter
I am into gliding which is something I have been doing since I was 15, it's brilliant fun, just amazing. There is a bit of string stuck to the outside that basically tells you if you are balanced. If it's back, you are balanced.
It's very peaceful when you are up there. There is this really overwhelming feeling of freedom, like you can go anywhere you want. It puts things in perspective when you are up there looking at the ground, everything seems so small, arguments or disagreements you have had with people seem tiny and petty. It really helps to calm me down . If I have had a bad week at school it reminds me how tiny everything is. You stop worrying about whatever it is that's bothering you, because it's really not that important.
I would like to get in to the Navy as a fast-jet pilot. I would like to fly F35s, hopefully. If the Navy phoned tomorrow and said, "We want you now," I would leave school in a heartbeat. I don't particularly enjoy school. I just want to fly as much as possible.
I am completely mind-made-up on the independence vote. I am going to be voting "No". I think it would be a shame to lose our shared British culture and a unique country and set of countries.
We [Scotland] are a small country that is unthreatening but you do need an armed forces. We don't have the money to support the aircraft we need. The airforce would be a bunch of gliders.
Carrah Hamilton, 16, from Hamilton, undecided voter
I think it's crazy giving 16-year-olds the vote. Particularly as it's for the first time, about such a big decision. People don't know a lot, including me. A couple of friends at football talk about it but at school no-one speaks about it.
I want free further education, a strong NHS and to keep the currency. I wish they would tighten immigration laws similar to those in Australia. I wish the NHS would stay and free university education, free for all.
I've got family in England and mum works in England three days a week and I worry it would make her life harder to travel back and forth. I have a football training session every Tuesday and Thursday night and play with Hamilton Academicals' girls' football club.
I also dance on other nights so Wednesday night is the only night I don't do anything. I also do a job selling merchandise to earn some money. I hope to go to university to do Law and Science.
Dancing will fit into my future plans but I'm not sure about football.
Gregor Larmour, 16 from Kilmarnock, undecided voter
I am in my fifth year at school, studying for my Highers, which I am not too buzzing about.
Music is a big part of my life. I would absolutely love to go into the music industry. The feeling you get at the end of a show is phenomenal. Before the show there are always nerves but you work hard and have proper fun.
My absolute dream is to get a record deal. I know it sounds a bit sad but that would make my life complete. I have had three major gigs. One was a Girl Guides fundraising concert, for their 100th birthday, with 80 to 90 folks there. At the moment I do a lot of covers but I try to write my own songs.
I don't want to stuck in Killie for ever. We got voted the worst place to live in Britain by some guy in London who has never been to Kilmarnock. It was to do with unemployment statistics and whatever. People in East Ayrshire are very genuine. Sometimes that's even a bad thing because they are so honest. They have no discretion if they are making comments on something.
I wish that the independence referendum was not being led by politicians. Then it would be far easier to understand the issues. What both sides say always sounds good, but how do you know it's the truth?
I hope something will come out to help me make up my mind. At the moment it will be about education because I don't know if I will go on to university. I want to be told definitely what's happening about education. That would probably push me towards one side or the other.
Sabina Jedrzejczyk, 16, from Dalkeith, undecided voter
Dad came here to work when I was 10. I remember it was scary but exciting. I knew only four words of English then, yes, no, don't know, and toilet. My identity is all three of Polish, Scottish and British. I feel very welcomed here but had a bad encounter with racism soon after we arrived. I'd like to stop racism.
I was lucky enough to be a runner in this summer's Commonwealth Games Queen's Baton Relay. I felt quite nervous when I was about to carry the Baton. I thought, "It's coming, don't drop it. Keep calm. Smile and look at people I love." I tried to walk slowly. Mum was very proud of me.
After school in Poland there is too much homework and you are still working at 22:00 or 23:00 for the next day and only Saturday and Sunday are free. I'm glad to be in school in Scotland. I have more free time to train in athletics. My dream is to win gold at the Olympics in 800m. I didn't know who I would run for - Scotland and Poland are my home. I also see myself becoming a software engineer. I will study at university and then dream to work with Google.
I am still undecided on which way I am going to vote in the referendum. I am scared of what the future might be and who will be running the country. Because I am an immigrant I would like to know what it means for immigrants.
Erin Fyfe McWilliam, 16, from Aberdeen - voting "No"
I spend my spare time catching up with all the American TV shows I watch, along with spending another chunk of my time online on Youtube, Twitter and Tumblr.
I like to go to the gym regularly and am also very sporty. I also have a job at weekends and somehow I still manage to meet my friends and get my homework done; probably because I'm a girl, and everyone knows we're good at multi-tasking.
In September I will be voting "No".
I hope this decision will help me get into university without having to pay tuitions so I don't have to spend the future paying off my debt.
I also think that the Better Together campaign is a lot stronger than the "Yes" campaign. They have facts and figures to back up what they expect to happen in the future. The "Yes" campaign, on the other hand, do not.
Their arguments boil down to: "You want this? Vote Yes and we will get you it." "You want that? Vote Yes and we can get you that too." I don't know about you, but that doesn't sound very stable to me.
I hope after the vote is announced we won't hold too many grudges. This referendum has caused huge divisions in Scotland (another reason why this whole thing was a bad idea), but we should all remember we were a part of this together.
Edan Hansen, 16, from Aberdeen, "Yes" voter
This picture was taken at Glasgow Comi-Con after a long, long wait to get there. I saw a Batman figure with its own battering ram and sword, epic-ness levels were at an all time high. Batman is my favourite DC Comics hero, I think. From Marvel, my favourite is either Thor, or Hulk, or Captain America.
I am autistic, which means I see the world differently from most other people. People who don't have autism are called "neuro-typical". I find that most neuro-typical people don't really understand me that well.
Autism can mean that you have difficulty understanding emotion, or interpreting what people really mean when they say things. It can also actually increase creativity though. It helps you learn with certain things. It can even improve your memory.
The word "autistic" is a bit like the word "gay", in that people sometimes wrongly use it as an insult, like, "Oh that's really gay" or, "He's being a bit autistic."
Actually, far from being an insult, it can mean something really good. I find reading and writing hard, but I find it really easy to draw, paint and even do sculptures.
I'm planning to vote "Yes" in the independence referendum because I want to get away from the current Westminster government. Taking the gamble on independence is worth it if the prize is a better country.
Nathan Epemolu, 16, from Hamilton, undecided voter
My mother is from England and my dad is from Nigeria. We lived in London for many years and I think that brings something different to the table when we are discussing how to vote on independence.
Faith is important to me. It can be taken anywhere. Even the idea of believing in something bigger than yourself is important.
Politics is not just about how it will help you but how it will help everyone in the long run. Believing in something is better, they [politicians] need the open-mindedness to know what the people want. I do feel sometimes that faith is under-represented when it comes to people making decisions.
I've no clue what I'm going to choose yet. I would hate to think there are people who will have flipped a coin on what to do. I want to come out with who is best equipped to run the country.
As much as I hate to say it, you actually appreciate the politicians even more and see how stressful it is to get a country running.
Margot Smith, 16, from the Isle of Skye, undecided voter
Where I live, you see tourists on the side of the roads all the time, taking pictures of the most insignificant things. They are there for, like, 20 minutes, taking photos of sheep or a phone box. I wouldn't stop and take pictures. I have basically seen everything on Skye. I don't feel like this is home. I love London so much, and Edinburgh. I like being at the centre of all the action and events.
My mum is from Paris and my dad is from Inverness. We came here because my dad got a job at the Three Chimneys restaurant and it was the best opportunity for the whole family.
I want to go to the city - either Glasgow or London - to study drama hopefully next year. I do enjoy the fresh air here. But I want to go shopping. I was very strongly a "No" voter. Then the "Yes" side completely swayed me, but now I would say I'm undecided.
I'm happy that us teenagers are trusted to vote.
Annie Lennox, 16, from Huntly, "Yes" voter
I was on a flight once, to Morocco, and the flight stewardess said, "Is your name Annie Lennox?" The guy next to me just said: "I can beat that, I'm Michael Jackson."
My sister and I did a talent show at the local hall when I was four and she was about six. She went up with dollies in hand and sang a lullaby. So we've always been musical.
Now I play and sing in a band. We go on tour over the summer for six weeks to lots of music venues. I've been doing it for years.
If I ever do go professional as a musician my middle name is Rose so I'd probably be Annie Rose.
I am definitely a "Yes" voter. I'm an avid "Yes" supporter. Scotland should stand up and make its own mark. I want the Scottish culture to be taken more seriously, especially in music.
Everyone's influenced by what their parents say and I've totally immersed myself in Scottish traditions.
When you are so involved in culture and the heritage of your country you obviously want to drive that forward.
I think independence will be the best way to do that.
Natalie Curran, 16, from Glasgow, "No" voter
When I was eight years old I started struggling to see the board at school. I would get really bad headaches and was feeling really sick. Over the course of twelve months, we kept visiting doctors and they kept saying my sight was fine. One doctor said I was lying to get attention.
It turned out I had a brain tumour pushing up on my optic nerves to the point it almost snapped one of them, hence the splitting headaches. They did an emergency operation. When they removed it there was only a tiny bit of the optic nerve left.
I can't see anything out my left eye and very little out my right. They also damaged the pituitary gland which affects my body's internal temperature control.
I feel politicians are too far removed from normal life. Even if the UK goes out of Europe I still think it's better together. The thing is, we all live in our own little bubbles but we are all in the same bath-tub so we should all stay together. You could say Scotland is the water, the English are the bubble bath, and the Welsh are the soap and shampoo.
I have wavered a little but whenever I remind myself of the arguments, I go back to "No". People forget it was a Scottish king who united the kingdoms in the first place. James the Sixth of Scotland became James the First of England.
Rory Doherty, 16, from Edinburgh, undecided voter
I love watching films, I love writing screenplays too, as there are endless possibilities. There are so many movies, and so many different types of movies.
I've written scripts for youth theatre in Edinburgh. One script I wrote was about the "Yes/No" debate and my thoughts on it.
I'm not convinced by either side on independence yet. I'm not sure about the ways they're trying to convince us.
There'll be pressures for more change but we need to know what that would be. I would like some factual coherence of what would happen either way.
I'm at the stage of deciding what courses I want to study at university. I want to do a lot of film-making and maybe a postgraduate in film so I can do more practical film-making.
Kieran Sutherland, 16, from Wick in the Highlands, "Yes" voter
I live in the far north of Scotland with my mum, my dad, and my three brothers. Like millions of others around the world, I have cerebral palsy, a condition that affects different people in different ways. For me, it means I am in a wheelchair, I have poor eyesight and co-ordination, and find moving around very difficult.
David Weir CBE (also pictured) has been a role model and a hero of mine since I was seven. The first race I saw him in was the London Marathon. I was amazed to see what people could do in their wheelchairs. Before that, because where I live is so isolated, I had always believed that I was the only person in the world in a wheelchair.
As well as a sense of awe for what the athletes could do, I also had a feeling of relief that I was not alone. My health took a turn for the worse three years ago, and I was in hospital for 10 weeks in a lot of pain. There were moments when I felt that I could not continue. In these moments, it was David Weir that helped me find strength.
I very clearly remember watching him win at the London Marathon and thinking: "He has taken everything negative in his life and turned it into a positive, I need to do the same."
Then one day, I got a chance to meet him as part of this BBC project I am involved with. It was a big surprise and I was so shocked when he came into the room. It left me speechless.
Some people say you should never meet your heros because you will only be disappointed.
I disagree. David Weir is one of the nicest people I have ever met and it's a memory I will always treasure.
I've spent this year trying to make my mind up which way I'll vote on independence. I was undecided until very recently but now I've made up my mind to vote "Yes".
The "No" side have not made clear what additional powers they will give the Scottish government if no goes through.
I think we have a better health service and education system at present, which could get better with more money and more attention from a government in Edinburgh.
Matthew Hall, 16, from Taynuilt in Argyllshire (originally from Durham), a "No" voter
I was worried the vote would stir up anti-English feeling, but that hasn't happened. I see myself as English and British.
I know English people in Scotland who are voting "No" and English people who are voting "Yes".
We came up here with my dad's work. It's a lot more rural and isolated out here than where we used to live. Everyone knows you, and you don't lock your doors.
For me personally the independence vote seems like some sort of a grudge match between Scotland and England.
Hardly anyone mentions Northern Ireland or Wales.
We defeated fascism together as the United Kingdom, and we built an empire on tea. We have got a significant contribution to G8 and the UN Security Council together, we have achieved so much.
There is the Westminster argument, that we're being dictated to but we have got a Parliament with more powers than either Northern Ireland or Wales have.
You should never confuse your patriotism for your nationalism, there is being proud and there is being supremacist about something.
Any party with National in the title has some sort of racist agenda, it doesn't matter if it's left or right.
Ida McVarish, 16, from Morar, undecided voter
My dad is American and my mum is Finnish. I think of myself as a kind of Finnish-American hybrid but not Scottish because I don't like it here. I have asked my dad for American citizenship because I want to go there when I leave school.
When my mum was pregnant with me there was a flood here so we had to borrow someone's Land Rover to get out. It's so remote.
When I was younger, growing up here was amazing. You played hide and seek all the time and your imagination could run wild. When I grew up though it got really, really boring, really quickly. I go up the hill to get out of the house, usually in the spring or autumn time. You're cooped up with your mum and brother so sometimes we get angry and snap at each other. Last year almost everyday I went out swimming in the loch.
I'm glad I get to vote on independence, but it's such a massive decision to make. At 16 you can have a family, get married, drive and can now vote on independence. I would like a brief summary, written in simple language and not with loads and loads of other explanation. It needs to be easy to understand.
I'm kind of undecided as there are good points on both sides. The whole thing about money and joining the EU just sounds complicated. My mum is very "Yes", she says it's working over there in Finland.
Andrew Hanton, 16, from Forres, a "Yes" voter
I like reading and I like TV shows and generally doing lazy teenager stuff - and studying of course. When I leave school I want to go into medical sciences, possibly medicine.
I personally will be putting "Yes" in September. It's a great disadvantage having a government hundreds of miles away. Forres, where I live, feels very disconnected from London.
Whichever way the vote goes eventually we must remember we're all citizens of Scotland. I heard a politician say that. We are not enemies when the debate is over.
People are talking about a spaceport in Moray and that would be really, really good for tourism and also just be really cool like Star Wars. I would love to go into space.
Jenna Gillespie, 16, from Aberdeen, "No" voter
Christianity is an important part of the Scotland system. I think it should be a bigger part of society. It's a good thing.
I am going into S5 so just doing my Highers now. I'm not sure what I will do yet I just have to get my exams and see how I do, just work hard at school. I would like to do an artistic career like animation.
I will be voting "No" to independence. I wouldn't see the country as in a very stable situation at the moment. When you think about independence you'd think you would do it at a time and we're more stable. I would like more honesty and everything feels to me like a propaganda speech. I want the proper facts, the cold hard facts, rather than loads of numbers. Obviously I want the country to do well. I want things to be fixed quickly so we can move on together.
Nicole Fraser, 16, from Aberdeen, undecided voter
In my free time I play my PS3 computer game. Mum says, "It's all you do." You literally can think, with these real-time games, that you're watching a movie you're part of.
Generally from when I wake up to when I go to bed I play during the holidays. I'm awake from 12:00 to 03:00.
If [independence] goes completely wrong will we be able to come back? I think England would take us back but you don't know. Politicians should stop speaking in riddles and put things in black and white.
I'm still on the fence with the referendum. I still have no clue what I'm going to vote. It is such a big thing. One way or another it's going to affect everything.
Halima Kolo, 16, from Dundee, undecided voter
I'm the fourth of five children, and the only girl. It's the worst thing ever. Having three older brothers is terrible, I just want them to move out already.
My dad came to Scotland to do his phD and my mum and him lived here ever since. He got a job and after that everything changed. I grew up here from the age of seven, and went to Nigeria for only the first time after that this December. It was just amazing seeing my whole extended family, and seeing how different their lives are to mine. I got these clothes made in Nigeria. I [wore them] once to school for a non-uniform day and people loved it.
I'm starting to realise that I am Nigerian. I'm starting to be proud of that I'm going to embrace it. People respect you more if you're proud of who you are. I always wear a headscarf but I am not a full hijabi yet. For my religion it's compulsory on reaching puberty.
At first I was a definite "Yes" voter on independence but then I went to a meeting about it and a few of my friends said no. So I'm undecided, leaning towards "Yes".
I'm really happy with the lowered voting age. We are responsible at 16, and able to make big decisions.
Photographs by Kieran Dodds/Panos Pictures
Being Sixteen in 2014 can be seen on BBC3 at 20:00 on 10 September 2014 and find out more about the participants of Generation 2014 here. And watch The Big, Big Debate, as thousands of 16 and 17-year-olds get together for a special first-time voters debate in Glasgow, a week before the vote.
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Rail passengers with season tickets who have been hit by long-running disruption on the Southern network are to be repaid the equivalent of a month's travel . So who's eligible for a refund, and how do you go about getting it? | The Department for Transport says more than 84,000 passengers are to be compensated following "extraordinary disruption" caused by Network Rail track failures, engineering works, unacceptably poor performance by the operator and the actions of the RMT union.
Who gets a refund?
Season ticket holders will be able to claim a refund for the equivalent of a month's (4 weeks) travel. That means an annual season ticket holder will be able to claim a refund against their 2016 ticket.
Those claiming against quarterly, monthly or weekly tickets must have bought travel for at least 12 weeks between 24 April 2016 and 31 December 2016 to be eligible.
How do you claim?
Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR) - the parent company of Southern - has the details of most season ticket holders who will have given their details when buying their tickets.
Ticket-holders will be sent an email inviting them to log into a website to claim compensation - which can be transferred directly to their bank account or claimed as vouchers.
GTR will also be able to consider proof of purchase from people claiming this compensation who are not registered with the company.
Customers do not need to contact Southern directly at this stage.
How long will it take?
In early January 2017 Southern will contact all customers on its database it believes qualify for a refund to confirm the amount due and the method of payment.
It is has not been outlined how long it will take for refunds to be made but current refund claims normally take 20 working days.
How much are they expecting to pay out?
The refund scheme is being funded by the Department for Transport, not Southern.
The total amount will depend on how many people claim and for what routes. Passengers with a Brighton to London annual season ticket, for example, will get £371 back.
Quarterly, regular monthly and weekly season ticket holders will also qualify for a one-off payment.
In response to a BBC inquiry, Southern said it did not have a definitive figure worked out.
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An 87-year-old motorist was stopped by police for driving the wrong way down the road - and then failed an eye test. | A police car was forced to take evasive action when the man drove the wrong way after pulling out from a junction on to the A3 in Surrey earlier.
He was stopped and given a roadside eyesight test, which he failed as he could only read a number plate from 7.3m away. The minimum distance is 20m.
Surrey Police said he voluntarily surrendered his driving licence.
The man, from Woking, was also reported for two driving offences.
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A great migration is under way. Children have returned to school and students are beginning to leave for university. Will the UK be able to avoid the outbreaks experienced at some US universities, asks Dr John Wright of Bradford Royal Infirmary. | In the hospital we continue to see small numbers of patients with Covid-19. We walk a tightrope of preparing for the autumn surge while trying to get all our normal clinical care waiting lists back to pre-pandemic levels. The lull in acute cases provides a tense truce. In the empty visitors' car parks discarded facemasks are the new tumbleweed.
Meanwhile in the city the fever is rising. Every day the coronavirus needle flickers upwards; it's tempting to tap the dial in the hope that is just a malfunction. By Friday the incidence rate has crept up towards 80 per 100,000 and the case positivity rate towards 8%, from less than 50 per 100,000 and 5% just two weeks ago.
And this is happening in the middle of the largest population movement seen since the start of the pandemic in March. Last week eight million children and young people returned cautiously to school - it will be a couple of weeks before we have an accurate picture of how many outbreaks are occurring in the classroom.
Universities will be next over the trenches. Next week about two million students will start back at university - young people with some of the highest rates of Covid-19, and they will come from all over the country to congregate in large numbers in university cities and campuses. They will both give and take SARS-CoV-2.
In the US, where students went back after their summer vacation last month, this has caused serious problems. The New York Times has counted tens of thousands of new cases at colleges and universities in the last few weeks.
So how has the University of Bradford been preparing for the start of term?
Vice Chancellor Prof Shirley Congdon tells me about 60% or 70% of the curriculum will be taught online, the rest will be face-to-face. Where students need to assemble, for laboratory work for example, an attempt will be made to keep them in small bubbles - though as the vice chancellor points out, different students choose different modules, so bubbles will inevitably overlap.
Freshers' week is going to look very different this year, and not just because of the masks, thermometers and guidance pamphlets that each new student will receive in a welcome pack.
"The Students' Union is working with us to do activities where we can have groups where 20 or 30 students maximum experience a campus activity. And then that will be repeated again at a different time of the day or week," Shirley Congdon says.
But when it comes to socialising, she accepts that students are going to do their own thing.
"We don't want to enforce a police state, nor could we," she says. "So what we're trying to do with students and our staff is really create a big community that understands the importance of following social distancing, making sure that we all understand the risks."
The university is ready for test and trace, following guidance from Public Health England. It would be great if the university could carry out tests itself, Shirley Congdon says, "but that's not been offered to us yet".
Front line diary
Prof John Wright, a doctor and epidemiologist, is head of the Bradford Institute for Health Research, and a veteran of cholera, HIV and Ebola epidemics in sub-Saharan Africa. He is writing this diary for BBC News and recording from the hospital wards for BBC Radio.
As many of the positive cases now being detected are among young people with mild or no symptoms, the eyes of the nation are glaring down at them as they revel in the joy and freedom of youth.
It seems unfair to blame them, though, when we are giving out such mixed messages. Go to the pub, eat out to help out, go to university. But keep your distance, don't mingle, stay home when you can.
Mark Mon-Williams, a professor of psychology at the University of Leeds and the Bradford Institute of Health Research, makes the point that it's unrealistic to expect young people not to socialise, and that this is a time when it's important for their personal development to meet new people.
"So I think we really should think seriously about how we can support young people to have those social interactions, while maintaining the overall safety of the population," he says.
In his view, viral transmission on campus, under the new teaching regimes that have been introduced at British universities, is likely to be less of a problem than in student accommodation. In the US, according to an editorial in the British Medical Journal, asymptomatic students infected one another "at lightning speed" in halls of residence and off-campus housing. A fellow psychologist at Indiana University in the US tells Prof Mon-Williams that all teaching has now gone online, the campus is deserted and that some fraternities and sororities (male and female societies with their own residential buildings) have infection rates of 80%.
Like most other northern universities, the University of Bradford stands proudly at the heart of the city, surrounded by inner city wards. It is in these wards that we are seeing by far the highest levels of positive SARS-CoV-2 test results, and in these wards where most of the student accommodation lies waiting - bare walls waiting to be decorated with student posters, silent corridors waiting to be filled with laughter and late-night conversations that will put the world to rights.
Ethan Chapman, 19, who is returning to Bradford from his home in Lancaster for the second year of a course in Paramedic Science, says it's difficult to predict how the pandemic will affect his course and his social life.
"In relation to parties, the school leavers will miss an opportunity," he thinks. "It's hard to know if people will still party, especially with Bradford being such a hotspot."
He expects students will be urged to stay within the bubbles that they find themselves in, through sharing kitchens and bathrooms in halls, or shared houses. But some people won't enjoy having their social life curtailed in this way, he predicts, and will want to socialise with a wider group.
Though he was pulled off a placement working with qualified paramedics at the start of the pandemic, he is expecting to be equipped with a fitted mask and other PPE, and for placements this year to go ahead.
An added challenge in Bradford is that many students - about half of the total - live at home, with the consequent risk that they will carry the virus to older and more vulnerable family members.
Studying away
In Britain, in the academic year 2017-18, just over 80% of full-time students left home to study - roughly half living in purpose-built halls and the rest in private rented accommodation
In 2015/6 the University of Bradford was one of 10 British universities where more than 50% of students lived at home
On average in Europe, 36% of students live in their parental home
There are also students such as Marium Zumeer, whom I wrote about in May after her recovery from Covid-19, who has a place at Leeds Beckett university, and will continue living at home in Bradford if she decides to accept it. Her sister, Hana. is already at the same university.
Marium knows only too well how serious this illness can be, having been very ill herself, and having lost her grandfather, Mohammed, in the pandemic.
She wears a mask, she carries hand sanitiser, and whenever she returns home she changes her clothes.
"University is about meeting new people, socialising and making friends and joining groups, though when meeting new people you don't know if they've got the virus. It will worry me a bit," she says.
"I chose a university that's close to home because I prefer staying at home, that's just a personal choice, but for those who are living at home they have to be more mature about staying safe."
Follow @docjohnwright and radio producer @SueM1tchell on Twitter
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On Tuesday the Saville Inquiry published its long-awaited report on Bloody Sunday when 13 people on a civil rights march were shot dead by paratroops in Londonderry, Northern Ireland. Click through this guide to find out how the day unfolded.
| Sources: Cain - key events of Bloody Sunday
Find out in detail what happened on the day in the Saville Report
What happened next
The events of Bloody Sunday caused shock and revulsion across the world. In Dublin, a crowd of protesters burnt the British Embassy.
In Northern Ireland, it marked the effective end of the non-violent campaign for civil rights.
Some young people who had previously regarded themselves as non-political joined the IRA.
Two months after Bloody Sunday, the Stormont parliament which had ruled Northern Ireland since its creation in the 1920s was suspended and direct rule from London was imposed.
In April, the Widgery Inquiry concluded that the Paratroopers' firing had "bordered on the reckless".
It also concluded the soldiers had been fired upon first and some of the victims had handled weapons, despite evidence from witnesses who said the victims were unarmed civilians.
The Catholic community rejected these findings as a "whitewash" and began a long campaign for another inquiry.
In 1998 a fresh inquiry, headed by Lord Saville, was announced.
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The budget retailer Poundworld faces an uncertain future after falling into administration. Chains including House of Fraser, Marks and Spencer and Mothercare, have announced they are closing branches. But what kinds of shops and leisure outlets are increasing and declining most across Britain? | By Justin ParkinsonBBC Reality Check
If you want to get a haircut or shave, go for a workout, drink a coffee or eat a pizza (either at home or in a restaurant), times are good.
Outlets offering these services are among the fastest-growing consumer premises in Britain, according to a survey by the Local Data Company.
But pubs, banks, travel agents, post offices and newsagents are becoming more of a rarity.
Despite overall sales rising considerably in May, British Retail Consortium chief executive Helen Dickinson has warned that conditions remain "extremely challenging" for shops, with margins tight and competition intense.
So, here are the types of premises - selling goods and/or services - apparently doing best at the moment (the net increase shows how many more premises opened than closed during the year):
The Office for National Statistics says British online sales increased to 17.3% of all retailing in the year to April, from 16.1% the previous year.
So, it's little surprise that businesses providing services and goods that would be hard or impossible to supply over the internet - beauty treatments, tattooing, cups of coffee, and so on - have taken over hundreds of premises.
Retailers, on the other hand, face "significant head winds" - including increases in the National Living Wage and rising costs in sourcing goods, with the decline in value of the pound - says Richard Lim, chief executive of the consultancy Retail Economics.
Meanwhile, consumers are looking for "low costs and convenience", leading them to online shopping for many goods, a trend, he says, that will "only accelerate", potentially damaging High Streets.
Here are the retail/service sectors that lost the most premises last year (the net decrease shows how many more closed than opened):
The pubs figure roughly tallies with Campaign for Real Ale data suggesting they are closing at the rate of two a day. It blames high tax rates on alcohol, saying they cause more people to drink at home. But the Office for National Statistics also reports the proportion of the population who drink has shrunk.
And a parliamentary report earlier this year described bank closures as "seemingly remorseless", saying decreased use of cheques and more payments being made electronically had played their part.
Likewise, sales of actual physical newspapers have fallen, as has the number of people smoking, hitting newsagents.
And the Association of British Travel Agents found that 83% of people used websites to book breaks last year - up from 76% in 2016.
Shops and leisure operators are dealing with an "unprecedented" range of challenges, including internet competition, business rate increases and lifestyle changes, says Mr Lim. "The question," he adds, "is how the strongest brands deal with what's happening."
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A total of 58 jobs are set to be cut at an office furniture firm in Rhondda Cynon Taff after sales fell during the coronavirus pandemic. | Orangebox opened its headquarters and factory in Nantgarw in 2014.
The firm, which employs about 250 people in south Wales, said it was offering voluntary redundancies in the hope of avoiding compulsory lay-offs.
Managing Director Mino Vernaschi said they had to make difficult decisions to ensure the future of the business.
"We are confident that that there is a strong future ahead and will continue to invest in innovative products to achieve our future growth plans," she said.
The firm, which also has bases in Hengoed and Huddersfield, exports furniture to countries across the world.
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Benedict XVI shocked the world in February when he became the first pope to resign in almost 600 years. But attention shifted quickly to the succession, and the election of the new Pope, Francis. Amid the drama, one question was never fully answered - why did Benedict quit? | By Mark DowdBBC Radio 4
Pope Benedict's official resignation statement offered his waning physical and mental powers as the explanation, but it's long been suspected there was more to it. And my inquiries have confirmed that.
I went to visit the Nigerian Cardinal, Francis Arinze at his apartment overlooking St Peter's. He's one of the most senior figures in the church and knows the Vatican like the back of his hand. He was even, for a short time in March of this year, mooted as a possible successor to Pope Benedict. And he was one of the select handful of senior church officials who were in the Pope's Apostolic Palace when he broke the news to them personally.
I raised the subject of the scandals that had preceded the Pope's bombshell decision and, in particular the Vatileaks affair in which the Pope's butler, Paolo Gabriele, had leaked confidential documents exposing Vatican power struggles. Could that have been a factor in his resignation? His answer was unexpected.
"It is legitimate for a person to speculate and say 'Maybe,' because some of his documents were taken secretly. It could be one of the reasons," he told me.
"Maybe he was so pained that his own butler leaked out so many letters that a journalist was able to write a book. It can be one of the reasons. I don't expect him to be enjoying that event."
In the Vatican, young ambitious members of the church are advised to "hear a lot, see everything and say nothing". That such a senior figure should essentially countenance a departure from the official line is significant.
Essentially, Pope Benedict was a teaching Pope, a theologian and intellectual. "His idea of hell would be to be sent on a one-week management training seminar," one insider told me. His misfortune was to accede to the papacy at a time that there was a power vacuum, in which a number of middle-ranking members of the Roman curia, the Church's civil service, had turned into "little Borgias" as another clerical official put it.
Don't take my word for it, this assessment comes from the highest source - the current leader of the Church. And Pope Francis does not mince his words. "The court is the leprosy of the papacy," he has said. He has described the curia as "narcissistic" and "self-referential". This is what Joseph Ratzinger had to deal with.
Over a period of time dating back to final years of Pope John Paul II, the heart of the HQ of the Roman Church had become dominated by infighting cliques. This was what the Pope's butler, Paolo Gabriele said he wanted to expose by photocopying and leaking all those documents.
But Gabriele said his relationship with Pope Benedict was like "father and son". So why did he act in a way that was sure to embarrass a man he was clearly close to?
"He said he had seen many ugly things inside the Vatican. At a certain point he couldn't take it any more," says his lawyer Cristiana Arru, clutching her rosary beads, in only her second ever public interview. "And so he looked for a way out. He says he saw lies being told. He thought that the Pope was being kept in the dark regarding key events."
Gabriele was found guilty of "aggravated theft" and spent three months in custody before being pardoned by the Pope. But that was not the end of it. The Church's leader set up an inquiry into the whole affair.
Three Cardinals produced a 300-page report. It was meant to be kept under lock and key, but a leading Italian daily claimed it had been briefed on its contents. The result? More embarrassing leaks, this time with claims of a network of gay priests exerting "inappropriate influence" inside the Vatican.
The headaches continued to mount for the German Pope. In many journalistic endeavours, "follow the money" is good advice for getting to grips with what is really going on, and it applies to the Vatican too. One of the most eyebrow-raising stories we encountered involved an annual Nativity scene in St Peter's Square.
For years, deals were struck in which the Vatican paid several times the market rate. When a whistleblower tried to reform the system, officials in the papal court persuaded a hapless Pope Benedict to promote him to a role 4,000 miles from Rome.
Similar antics occurred at the Vatican Bank, for years a source of unwelcome headlines for the Catholic Church. It was set up to help religious orders and foundations transfer much-needed money to far-flung parts of the world. But when a sizeable proportion of the transactions are in cash and are being sent to politically unstable parts of the planet, it does not take a genius to see what might go wrong.
It appears that bank officials took key decisions without always informing the Pope. When the board ousted its reforming president, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi (conveniently, on the day that the news of the Gabriele's arrest was getting saturation news coverage), the Pope did not find out until it was too late. He was "very surprised" in the later words of his private secretary. Gotti Tedeschi was an Opus Dei member and thought to be close to the Pope, but in the end this did not protect him.
Did all this prove too much for the ageing Pope Benedict?
Examine the precise words of the papal press spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi: "The Church needed someone with more physical and spiritual energy who would be able to overcome the problems and challenges of governing the church in this ever-changing modern world." Maybe that is as near as you are ever going to get from a senior official that the church had become ungovernable and needed someone else at the helm to stop the rot.
This is a church that now has a huge opportunity to move on and face up to the challenges of the 21st Century. Often seen as remote, its leadership is now canvassing the views of ordinary Catholics on hot-button issues such as contraception and gay marriage. Reform has come on the back of scandal. This is a development that has not gone unnoticed by Cardinal Arinze.
"What you have to remember," he says, "is that God often writes straight on crooked lines."
Mark Dowd presents The Report on BBC Radio 4 on Thursday 28 November at 20:00 GMT
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A woman has been charged after a dog was kicked and a man spat at and racially abused. | The dog walker was not seriously injured in the attack in the Hob Moor area of York on 10 June, police said.
The 51-year-old woman has been charged with racially aggravated assault, harassment of the owner and causing unnecessary suffering to the dog.
She is due to appear at York Magistrates' Court next month, North Yorkshire Police said.
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In the North Atlantic lies a remote group of volcanic islands renowned for their rugged beauty. Increasingly favoured by tourists, the Faroe Islands announced this year they were temporarily closing down parts of the country. | By Yaroslav LukovBBC News, Faroe Islands
The first thing you discover about these islands, halfway between Norway and Iceland, is the weather.
Monstrous gusts welcome planes as they wobble in to land at picturesque Vagar airport. Step outside the terminal and the power of the wind can almost knock you off your feet.
When the archipelago's authorities declared they were shutting down 11 popular tourist sites for two days last month, they also advertised for volunteers.
"Closed for maintenance, open for voluntourism," their video said.
From thousands of applications, 100 people have been selected. Aged between 18 and 75, they have come from 25 countries, including as far afield as Australia.
These "voluntourists" agreed to pay for their own flights and work for two days on selected sites. In return, they are fed and lodged without charge.
On arrival, they are split into colour-coded groups to work with the locals across the 18 islands.
"Brown group" are quickly put to work near the islands' most important historical site in the village of Kirkjubour, which is home to about 50 residents, on the largest island of Streymoy.
Few among the team of Britons, Norwegians, Danes and Irish have the faintest idea of what to expect.
A 7km (4.3 miles) rocky trail awaits, snaking up into the foggy hills, and with it a full working day of lifting heavy boulders.
By the end of day one everyone in the team is scratched and hurting, discovering muscles they never knew they had.
But for many, there is also a feeling of deep satisfaction and a sense of belonging.
Danish volunteer Casper Abenth came along in search of a challenge, away from his typical office job.
"It was pretty hard work - we're out in the elements and there's a lot of wind and there is a lot of carrying heavy stones," he says.
On the second day, they continue their task of building the rocky trail.
Green group are working a short ferry-ride away across the sea, past fog-covered, rocky outposts, on the island of Sandoy.
They are in Skarvanes, a village with a fewer than 10 residents.
The team, which includes Germans and Americans, is tasked with mending the old cairn path, fixing gates and building steps over fences, or stiles.
Other volunteer groups are busy working on a range of projects including constructing viewpoints to help preserve nature and protect birdlife sanctuaries.
The future for the Faroes?
After two days of hard work, project organisers Visit Faroe Islands tell the volunteers their results have made a "notable impact", far exceeding their expectations.
"It has been wonderful to see so many faces from around the world come together with local villagers and farmers with one united mission and a 'roll-up-your-sleeves' attitude," says director Guðrið Hojgaard.
A similar project for 2020 has already been announced.
The concept of "voluntourism" itself is nothing new: such initiatives have taken place elsewhere in recent years.
So, is the scheme breaking new ground in responsible tourism or just a clever publicity campaign to get more visitors?
The islanders say the maintenance projects were co-ordinated with them and took into account their needs first.
In some areas plans had to be adjusted not to damage the fragile ecosystem.
"This was something that really had to be done for the locals," said Sandoy farmer Jacob Martin Debes.
"So, it wasn't just a PR campaign," he said, adding that the main beneficiaries of the maintenance projects would be local residents.
'Not another Iceland'
The big question now is how to strike the right balance between luring more tourists and protecting the ecosystem and traditional way of life.
The idea of a boom in tourism may seem unlikely as the Faroe Islands - an autonomous country part of the Kingdom of Denmark - are still relatively unknown, even in Scandinavia.
"It can't be easy to market the Faroe Islands. Because it's in the middle of nowhere," said Swedish volunteer Hakan Johansson.
51,312 Population
80,000Sheep
18 Volcanic islands
110,000Tourists in 2018
Travel here also remains a big headache.
Take the UK - potentially a huge tourist market - where the only direct flights come from Edinburgh and the same difficulties face those in continental Europe.
But change is afoot.
Iceland, seen by some Faroese as a cultural and linguistic big brother, has become a prime tourist destination with more than two million visitors a year.
And there is an expectation that these Nordic islands could follow suit, because of a 10% rise in tourism and 110,000 people visiting in 2018.
"We don't want to become a new Iceland. We have to keep it the way it has always been here," one regional tourism representative said.
"We don't want ugly hotels and apartments taking over our islands. We have to protect the local farmers and their sheep."
The picturesque capital of Torshavn has a population of about 20,000 and just two hotels, although two more are being built.
For all the Faroe Islands' big plans, Faroese Prime Minister Aksel Johannesen has made clear he values the "huge responsibility" to look after the community and their environment.
"While we welcome people from all over the globe to experience the Faroe Islands, we also need to preserve and protect what we have to ensure a sustainable future," he said.
Saviour Mifsud is a Faroe Islands-based photographer.
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A pedestrian killed in a crash involving two cars on the A63 in East Yorkshire has been named by police. | Darren Barker, 51, from Hull was taken to hospital on the evening of Saturday 3 April after the collision on Clive Sullivan Way, but later died.
His family continue to be supported by specially trained officers, said Humberside Police.
Witnesses to the crash on the busy road A-road are still being sought by officers, the force added.
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New morning show Daybreak has made its debut on ITV. | Ex-One Show presenters Adrian Chiles and Christine Bleakley kicked off the programme by welcoming and thanking viewers for "joining us on our first day".
Former Prime Minister Tony Blair also appeared on the show for his first live UK television interview since the publication of his memoir, A Journey.
Daybreak's predecessor GMTV bowed out on Friday after a 17-year run.
The new show is not a complete departure from its predecessor, with former GMTV faces Kate Garraway, John Stapleton and Dr Hilary Jones appearing alongside new presenters.
The inaugural show featured items including interviews with victims of the Farepak collapse, cuts to the schools building programme and a skateboarding bulldog.
It also visited Forth Park Hospital in Kirkcaldy, Fife, to meet parents of newborn babies, coinciding with the birthday of the programme.
The Prince of Wales is due to appear later this week from the new studio in London's South Bank.
Blogging on The Guardian's website, Stuart Heritage wrote: "Although it does seem like a continuation of GMTV rather than a bold reinvention, some of the new aspects of Daybreak have worked.
"Adrian and Christine have done reasonably well and the other new faces all seem like good additions."
The Daily Mail noted "the pair looked incredibly cosy", even though "they stumbled over a word or two".
But The Telegraph's Andrew Pettie seemed less than impressed, saying "this could have been any old edition of any other breakfast show".
"Daybreak's producers had promised that it would help set the day's news agenda for its viewers. For most of the show, however, the news items were flabby and lacklustre," he added.
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Animation plays a big part in both children's and adults' lives these days - just look at the popularity of online games , TV series such as Paddington , and recent box office hits such as Detective Pikachu . | By Sherie RyderBBC UGC hub and Social News
So when long-running US cartoon series Arthur introduced its first gay wedding, it gained huge traction on social media.
Now on its 22nd series, Arthur is produced by American public-service broadcaster PBS, known for its educational children's broadcasts, and is currently broadcast on CBBC daily at 0700.
In this episode, Arthur, an eight-year-old aardvark, attends his teacher's wedding, along with friends and other teachers, where they anticipate Mr Ratburn's marriage to Patty, a female rat.
The first surprise is that Patty is his sister, and the second, when he walks down the aisle, is that he's with his groom.
In New York, one Twitter user's post highlighting Mr Ratburn's gay marriage, was "liked" more than 112,000 times in 21 hours.
Gamers, animators and fans have shared their congratulations, with comments including: "Love conquers hate," "Welcome out," and "Arthur says, 'Gay rights.'''
While one Twitter user asked why no-one was talking about the fact Patty was also "clearly" gay.
Another Twitter user, an actor, writer and "gay internet person", was clearly happy with the coming out, calling it his "Game of Thrones finale".
One fan of drawing and watching cartoons joined in with a '"Woo-hoo" for featuring gay teachers in children's cartoons.
But not everyone was impressed with the broadcast. One Twitter user questioned PBS Kids's agenda. And someone on Facebook called it "grooming kids and wrong".
It's not the first time a gay character has been introduced to children's cartoons.
Variety Magazine reported that children's TV network Nickelodeon had featured a "bi-racial" gay couple in its series Loud House in 2016.
And what about the timing of the event? It comes not long after Teacher Appreciation Week in the US, when Arthur PBS tweeted a form encouraging pupils to nominate their favourite teacher, giving its own example of Mr Ratburn.
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Elevation to the top leadership of one of the world's deadliest militant movements does not come with assurances of longevity, but Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour's short tenure as Taliban leader has to be some sort of a record. | By M Ilyas KhanBBC News
He came from the influential Ishaqzai clan of the Durrani tribe of Pashtuns in Kandahar province, the political and cultural seat of Pashtun power in Afghanistan.
Before assuming the leadership of the Taliban, he functioned as the acting head of the movement on behalf of Mullah Mohammad Omar, its founder and spiritual head.
In this capacity, he is understood to have authorised the release of periodic statements by Mullah Omar on the official Taliban website, even after Mullah Omar had been dead for a long time.
This created controversy within the higher echelons of the movement, and there were allegations that he might have conspired with some other tribal allies or elements in Pakistan to assassinate Mullah Omar.
Many of his detractors accused him of being firmly in the hands of the Pakistani intelligence apparatus, which they say offers him sanctuary and protection.
However, the main challenges to his leadership eased away, and even al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri expressed his allegiance to Mullah Mansour as the legitimate successor to Mullah Omar, after his appointment in July 2015.
The BBC spoke to a number of experts on the Taliban to build up a picture of how the group operated under its new leader.
A prominent young fighter
Mullah Mansour was born sometime between 1963 and 1965 in Band-e-Taimoor, a village in Maiwand district of Kandahar, a southern province of Afghanistan that shares a border with Pakistan's south-western Balochistan province.
During the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s, Mullah Mansour, like some other members of his family, is said to have carried a gun alongside Islamist resistance fighters of the mujahideen.
Like some other members of his family, he also followed a local group led by Mullah Haji Mohammad, who was the regional commander of Hezb-e-Islami Khalis, one of seven main Pakistan-based resistance groups led by Maulvi Yunus Khalis.
Some sources say he was a prominent, though young, fighter, but not much is known about his exploits then.
In 1987, he is known to have moved to Quetta, the capital of Pakistan's Balochistan province, and later to Peshawar in the north-west, in what is now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, where he resumed a religious education that had been interrupted by the war in Afghanistan.
Mullah Mansour was among the first bands of Taliban, or seminary students, that descended from Pakistan to capture Kandahar and then the rest of Afghanistan in a two-year blitzkrieg that wiped out nearly all the various mujahideen groups except the Northern Alliance.
According to an independent Afghan news agency, Pajhwok, after the capture of Kandahar, the Taliban leadership put Mansour in charge of airport security in the southern city and later made him "commander of its jet fighters".
When the Taliban captured Kabul in 1996, he was initially appointed as director of the Afghan airline Ariana and was later made minister of civil aviation, with additional responsibility for transport and the air force.
There have been allegations that when the Taliban were in power, he used drug money from the poppy fields of the south to set up businesses in the Gulf.
Rise to the leadership
Like most Taliban leaders in the south, Mullah Mansour moved to Quetta when the US attacked Afghanistan in late 2001.
As Taliban resistance to the US grew, he was named shadow governor of Kandahar, an indication of his importance within the movement.
He also quickly climbed the ladder within the Taliban ruling council.
In 2007, Pakistani security forces captured former Taliban defence minister and the movement's acting head, Mullah Obaidullah Akhund, in Quetta.
The Taliban's ruling council replaced him with Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar and appointed Mullah Mansour as one of his two deputies.
Mullah Baradar himself was arrested in a joint ISI-CIA operation in 2010, paving the way for Mansour to become the acting head of the movement.
Leaks by Afghan intelligence in July that Mullah Omar had died sometime in 2013 created an embarrassing situation for Mullah Mansour.
But the Pakistan-based leadership council moved quickly to confirm him as their permanent head, in a move aimed at preventing initial unrest among the rank and file from translating into a wider divide.
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For 50 years now, they have stood proudly at the heart of the Ironbridge Gorge as one of Shropshire's best-known landmarks. But the cooling towers at Ironbridge Power Station will become just a memory later this year - when they are demolished simultaneously in a matter of seconds. | The power station opened in 1969, but stopped generating electricity in November 2015. Now a major programme of demolition is under way at the site, nestling on the banks of the River Severn.
The dramatic moment will be the collapsing of the four cooling towers. And although no firm date has been announced, developers Harworth Group said they were committed to bringing them down "later this year".
It is a date in Ironbridge's history that is likely to draw large crowds to the area. Already photographers and fans of the towers have been scouting out the best positions to position their cameras and tripods.
For now, a team of demolition workers continue working to transform what was once one of the UK's largest plants, providing power for the equivalent of 750,000 homes.
The most recent master-plan shows a mixed-use scheme for 1,000 new homes in addition to a range of commercial, leisure and community uses, including a park and ride facility and a school.
Talks have been taking place with Network Rail over bringing existing rail sidings on the site back to life.
Walking around the site, you are immediately struck by the imposing size of the towers, and the bravery and skill of the workers who built them.
And it is pretty awe-inspiring to step inside one of the towers, where air and water were once brought into direct contact with each other to reduce the water's temperature.
Next door to the towers is the cavernous turbine hall, where you could be forgiven for thinking you have wandered on to the set of a Mad Max sci-fi film.
It is a mass of mangled metal and giant tubes, with workmen using oxy-acetylene cutting equipment.
Building work on the power station began in 1962, and it was connected to the National Grid seven years later.
Originally coal-fired, it converted to burning wood-pellets in 2013.
The power station was switched off when it reached its 20,000 hours limit of generation under an EU directive.
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Nearby residents were divided over whether they wanted to see the demise of the cooling towers, with some saying they were "an eyesore".
But others had been clinging to the hope that at least one tower could be preserved for generations to come.
Photography and words by John Bray
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Caked in filth, the world's most powerful drug baron hauled himself from a manhole. | By Joshua NevettBBC News
For Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán, whose feats of escapology were matched only by his drug-smuggling acumen, it was a trademark yet ultimately futile manoeuvre. The 17 Mexican marines raiding his ranch nearby would catch him soon enough.
Six months earlier, he had humiliated Mexican authorities by fleeing Mexico's most secure prison, his second jailbreak in two decades. This time he would not slip through their fingers, although those who caught him were left in no doubt how angry he was to have been arrested.
"You are all going to die," he warned police in the hours after his capture in Los Mochis, north-west Mexico, on 8 January 2016.
Three years on, Guzmán has been handed a life sentence, plus 30 years, after being found guilty of international drug smuggling in a lurid three-month trial that exposed his criminal empire.
At his sentencing in New York, Guzmán said he had received an unfair trial and his treatment in solitary confinement was tantamount to torture.
"We're never going to see his like again," Douglas Century, the author of the book Hunting El Chapo, told the BBC.
Guzmán was the oldest of seven children born into a poor family in the rural community of La Tuna in Sinaloa state, north-west Mexico.
His parents - Emilio Guzmán Bustillos and María Consuelo Loera Pérez - earned their living from farming. His father was officially a cattle rancher but is believed to have been an opium poppy farmer, Malcolm Beith writes in his book, The Last Narco.
Guzmán's enterprising spirit was apparent from a young age. He would support his family by selling oranges to peasant farmers for a few pesos. His penchant for the spoils of wealth didn't go unnoticed, either. In a Vice News podcast, Guzmán's younger sister Bernarda said he would wear fake gold jewellery when visiting family members.
"Even as a little child, he had ambitions," his mother told filmmakers in 2014. She recalled he had "a lot of paper money" which he would count and recount.
His first foray into organised crime came at the age of 15, when he cultivated his own marijuana plantation with his cousins. Then, he adopted the nickname "El Chapo" - Mexican slang for "Shorty". But his ambitions belied his diminutive stature (he is only 5ft 6ins, or 1.64m).
In his late teens, Guzmán left La Tuna to seek his fortune in drug smuggling. "He always fought for a better life," his mother said.
That better life would come at a cost, paid for by illegal drugs and years of bloodshed. From his beginnings as a hitman, Guzmán's rise through the ranks of the criminal underworld was swift.
Former cartel kingpin Héctor "El Güero" Palma gave Guzmán his first break in Guadalajara in the late 1970s, when he oversaw a shipment of drugs from the Sierra Madre mountains. Guzmán was ambitious and eager to increase the quantities of drugs being transported, according to Mr Beith's book, The Last Narco. He was also "no-nonsense" and would execute employees himself if deliveries were late, Mr Beith said.
Guzmán's reputation for ruthless efficiency was duly noted. In the 1980s he was introduced to Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo - known as the Godfather of the Guadalajara cartel - who put him in charge of handling logistics.
When Félix Gallardo was arrested in 1989, his cartel's drug trafficking territories were divided among different factions, later known as The Federation. Guzmán was a beneficiary, setting up his own Sinaloa cartel with other traffickers in north-west Mexico.
In the 1990s, he honed his operation, pioneering the use of sophisticated underground tunnels to move drugs across the border.
"He was the go-to guy," David Weinstein, a former federal prosecutor in Miami, told the BBC. "When the United States started shutting down ports of entry in the Atlantic and Pacific in the 1990s, drugs had to go through Mexico. And if it had to go through Mexico, it had to go through El Chapo."
He invested his proceeds wisely, not only expanding his enterprise, but building infrastructure that benefited locals in Sinaloa too. This cemented his popularity. "You are Santa Claus. And everybody likes Santa Claus," Eduardo Medina Mora, Mexico's former ambassador in Washington, told the New Yorker in 2014.
Over time, Guzmán's cartel became one of the biggest traffickers of drugs to the US and in 2009, he entered Forbes' list of the world's richest men at number 701, with an estimated worth of $1bn (£709m).
As his wealth and empire grew, so too did scrutiny from law enforcement. "The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) have been after him for decades," Mr Weinstein said.
In 1993, a Roman Catholic cardinal was shot dead in a turf war with rival drug smugglers. Guzmán was among those blamed and a bounty was placed on his head by the Mexican government. His moustachioed face, previously unknown to the public, started appearing in newspapers and on TV screens. Within weeks, he was arrested in Guatemala and he was later sentenced to 20 years in prison on charges of conspiracy, drug trafficking and bribery.
A prison psychological profile described him as "egocentric, narcissistic, shrewd, persistent, tenacious, meticulous, discriminating, and secretive", according to the New Yorker. In prison, he enjoyed a life of luxury, smuggling in lovers, prostitutes and Viagra, according to reports in Mexico.
Eight years behind bars was enough for Guzmán. In January 2001, he broke out of a top-security jail, Puente Grande. He did so, as the myth goes, in a laundry cart. What's more likely, multiple journalists and authors argue, is that he simply walked out of the door with the help of corrupt guards.
Guzmán controlled the prison to such an extent he escaped in police uniform, Mexican journalist Anabel Hernández wrote in her book, Narcoland. Guzmán would spend the next decade evading authorities and consolidating his power as Mexico's pre-eminent drug smuggler. In that period, he always seemed to be one step ahead of would-be captors and rival cartels.
"He's a micro-manager," said Mr Century, who co-authored his book with Andrew Hogan, the undercover DEA agent who caught Guzmán in 2014. "In the text messages we have, he's in the weeds of every single minor facet of his drug operation."
Sex was his other preoccupation, Mr Century said. "He had more mistresses than you can probably fathom. This was his existence: having sex with strange women and micro-managing every detail of his operation."
After 13 years on the run, Guzmán was captured by Mexican marines called in by Mr Hogan in February 2014. Guzmán's second prison break, in July 2015, was arguably even more fantastical than the first. This time, his accomplices used GPS to burrow a 1.5km (one mile) tunnel that led directly underneath his cell in Altiplano prison in central Mexico.
The escape was elaborate and carefully planned. The tunnel had ventilation, lighting and stairs and the exit was hidden by a construction site. Mexican TV stations later aired footage that showed that guards failed to act when loud hammering was heard from inside Guzmán's cell.
Guzmán had embarrassed Mexico's government for the second time, leaving then-President Enrique Peña Nieto "deeply troubled" and "outraged".
His freedom, however, was short-lived. In January 2016, Guzmán was tracked down to a house in an affluent part of Los Mochis in northern Sinaloa. Five of Guzmán's guards were killed in the raid by Mexican marines and he managed to flee out of a manhole, but was caught in a car while leaving town. One year later, he was extradited to the US.
His Achilles' heel, Mr Century told the BBC, was his narcissism. He was reaching out to actors and directors to commission screenplays about his life, Mr Century said. His communication with actors and producers gifted Mexico's attorney general a new line of investigation.
"When he escaped from prison in 2015, he probably could have run away to the mountains and just lived," Mr Century said. Instead, Guzmán made the unprecedented move of granting an exclusive interview to Hollywood actor Sean Penn in October 2015. It was a decision that may have cost him his freedom.
"I have a fleet of submarines, airplanes, trucks and boats," he said in the interview published in Rolling Stone magazine. After his capture it was speculated - though never formally confirmed - that Mexican authorities found Guzmán by tracking Penn. "He contacted actresses and producers, which was part of one line of investigation," said Mexico's attorney general, Arely Gómez.
Facing a life sentence at a "supermax" prison in the US, Guzmán's fleet is of no use to him now.
Over his 30-year criminal career, he is believed to have earned more than $14bn (£11bn) in cash proceeds from narcotics sales, the US Department of Justice said. So far, the value of Guzmán's assets has proven difficult to verify. Forbes even removed him from its billionaire rankings over verification concerns.
The $14bn figure is too high, Bruce Bagley, a Mexican drug cartel expert, argued. He told Forbes that most Mexican drug lords plough their revenues into "operations and protection", estimating that "El Chapo probably makes well below a billion per year". Mr Weinstein said the $14bn figure was not unrealistic, but doubted the full amount would be recovered.
Some of his assets were mentioned during his 11-week trial in New York. A former cartel member told the court Guzmán bought homes in every state in Mexico. Miguel Angel Martinez said Guzmán was so wealthy, he had a private zoo, a $10m beach house and yacht he named after himself ("Chapito"), the court heard.
The most jaw-dropping revelations, however, were not about his wealth.
BBC reporter Tara McKelvey covered the trial, which started in November 2018. She said the courtroom "looked like a real-life movie", the jurors watching intently as they would a Netflix show.
His beauty queen wife, Emma Coronel Aispuro, she said, "looked bored most of the time" - even when Guzmán's former mistress testified. While Coronel remained placid, the trial's astonishing moments shocked others.
One witness, for example, told the court Guzmán buried a man alive. Another told of a rival narco chief who refused to shake Guzmán's hand - and paid for it with his life. Court papers also accused him of drugging and raping girls as young as 13, calling them his "vitamins".
The scale of his drug trafficking operation was laid bare, too.
Assistant US Attorney Adam Fels alleged that Guzmán had sent the equivalent of more than a line of cocaine for every single person in the US in just four shipments. And to protect his businesses, a bribe of $100m (£77m) was paid to former President Peña Nieto when he took office in 2012, it was alleged in court. Mr Peña Nieto strenuously denies the allegation.
When Guzmán's guilty verdict was read aloud, his mouth was "agape" and he looked "vaguely stunned", the New York Times reported.
In a trial that attracted podcasters, screenwriters and true-crime obsessives, some observers said the media attention trivialised the proceedings. The intention was quite the contrary, our correspondent said. The trial was meant to be a public spectacle to show what El Chapo and his henchmen had done and to send a warning to others, she said.
The title of Mr Beith's book, The Last Narco, suggests Guzmán is one of a dying breed of ultra-violent drug barons as bloodthirsty as they are shrewd.
Yet, while Guzmán is likely to die behind bars, Mexico's drug-smuggling problem is likely to outlive him. In his Rolling Stone interview, Guzmán said it was false to assume drug trafficking would cease "the day I don't exist".
For all his supposed vanity and self-confidence, not even Guzmán can claim to be the last narco.
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Snow has continued to fall over large parts of Scotland.
| The white stuff has been falling over the Highlands, parts of Moray, Perthshire, Tayside and central Scotland.
Some dramatic images have been captured by the Sportscotland Avalanche Information Service (SAIS).
SAIS teams report on the potential risk of avalanches in six mountain areas - Glencoe, Lochaber, Creag Meagaidh, Northern Cairngorms, Southern Cairngorms and Torridon.
The service, which is used by hillwalkers and climbers, runs between December and early April.
Several of the team members make their daily checks accompanied by their hardy dogs. This one chills out during a trip into the Southern Cairngorms.
Snow has also fallen over central Scotland where a small number of schools have been closed.
The white stuff has been falling to depths of several inches in Tyndrum.
And to even greater depths at Dalwhinnie in the Highlands.
A pet rabbit called Bugs has been eating the carrot noses on snowmen built in a garden in Inverness in the Highlands where almost 100 schools are shut and snow has affected travel on some roads.
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SAIS
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More than 300 people have gathered at the National Bedbug Summit in Washington DC to try to find ways to deal with the growing problem of infestations. Experts say bedbugs are now the "toughest pests to control", and that the insects are becoming more resistant to chemical treatments. | By Rajini VaidyanathanBBC News, Washington
Warning - reading this could make you itch.
"I can't think of anything creepier than these little things that suck the blood out of you," says Bob Rosenberg, vice-president of the National Pest Management Association.
"You wake up with your sheets stained by faecal matter and blood; can you think of anything worse?" he asks.
With a description like that - perhaps not. And that is why more than 300 people, from lawmakers to pest controllers to academics, have met in the nation's capital to discuss ways to beat the bedbugs.
Bug bear
It's not your usual fodder for Washington summits, granted - but the issue of bedbugs is so widespread that representatives from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the US Department of Agriculture, and the US Department of Housing and Urban Development are among the list of attendees.
There are no nationally-collated figures on the numbers of bedbug infestations in the US, but officials from the EPA say cases are on the rise, and that they are putting more money and manpower into tackling the problem.
"It's spreading throughout the country," says Bill Diamond, from the EPA. "It used to just be concentrated in hot spots but now we're seeing them pop up in lots of places."
Mr Diamond says that while cases are still mainly confined to cities on the East Coast, there are now reports of infestations in every state in America. The purpose of the bedbug summit is to determine the nature and scope of the problem and find ways to deal with it more efficiently.
One problem, Mr Diamond says, is that the bugs are becoming increasingly resistant to the pesticides used to control them.
"There are many different strains of bugs not only in this country but around the world and that's one of the problems we are having," he adds.
Itchy infestations
This is one reason why the nation's pest controllers now say that bedbugs are the toughest insects to deal with.
"When you ask US pest control operators what is the most difficult pest to control - is it termites, cockroaches, bedbugs or ants - close to 80% say bedbugs are the most difficult," says Mr Rosenberg.
"There's not any one silver bullet, not one magic thing you can do that works all the time."
Bedbugs often live in the seams of mattresses, sofas and sheets, emerging to feed on their victims at night.
They are not known to carry diseases, but many people develop an itchy swelling when bitten.
Many people are now trying to deal with bedbugs themselves, and while this was a topic for discussion on the summit's agenda, experts say DIY treatments such as home chemicals and "foggers" - bug bombs - should be used with caution.
Fifty years ago, cases of bedbugs were virtually unheard of. Back then, chemicals such as DDT - which is now banned - were credited for killing them off.
In recent years, the rise has been attributed by some experts to an increase in international travel.
The numbers of people calling out professional help to eradicate bedbugs is now at an all-time high. Between 2006 and 2009 it tripled - with almost $258m (£160m) spent on treatments.
In New York last year, locations including the flagship Nike store, a branch of lingerie chain Victoria's Secret and even the BBC's studios at the United Nations were forced to deal with infestations.
'Stigma misplaced'
One of the summit's attendees, Michael O'Leary from the Baltimore City Health Department, says his city saw a 93% increase in infestations between July and December 2010, compared with the previous year.
"We see about 90 cases per month during the peak periods which is during summer. Overall we see maybe 650 to 700 cases in a year, and that's probably only a quarter of the actual cases," he says.
He has come to the summit in the hope of securing more resources to deal with the problem.
"We are doing what we can, but we could be doing a lot more," he says.
"The stigma around bugs is that they are caused by people being dirty, poor people, or through inadequate housing - that is not true.
"I often go to talks and I have a piece of string on me and I say picking up a bug during the day is as easy as picking up string on your clothes."
But perhaps a bit more uncomfortable.
There was very little head-scratching at the summit as the delegates crammed into the hall to hear such sessions as: "The cornerstone of control and prevention", "Using temperature extremes for best effect" and "Educating to increase successes in bed bug control".
All of this is working towards the creation of a National Bedbug Strategy - a comprehensive programme of education and research all aimed at killing the little critters off.
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After months of gradual atrophy, simmering frustration and pretty toxic arguments, the inhabitants of the Westminster village are slowly disappearing for a while - whether to help constituents, take to a sun lounger, or a mixture of the two. | Laura KuenssbergPolitical editor@bbclaurakon Twitter
When the place fills up again on the other side of the summer, if the last 48 hours are anything to go by, events might be even more dramatic, and wildly unpredictable.
Before I sign off for a few weeks, here are few thoughts about how it might unfold.
It's been a long old year, so forgive for putting them in the form of a list. In no particular order, here are 10 things worth noting as this session comes to a close.
1) The new prime minister is going to do a fair bit of darting about the UK in his first week or so in office, in an effort to show that he cares about the Union, and not just the south east of England that sucks up so much of the country's political power, resource and focus.
2) Mr Johnson is not likely to do the same around multiple European capitals, at least not any time soon.
Calls and communications with other leaders are already under way, though. Chancellor Angela Merkel has invited him to Berlin, and President Emmanuel Macron has invited him to France. But Number 10 right now does not want to look like it will budge, and neither does the EU.
3) He does want to take the country out with a Brexit deal. From multiple conversations with different insiders, that is crystal clear. Downing Street is not plotting a no-deal conspiracy.
4) The PM is, however, absolutely willing to take us out of the EU without formal arrangements in place, if needs be.
And there is an absolute awareness in Number 10 that the chances of that are not to be, as he claimed, "a million to one", but pretty small - they might, perhaps, be more accurately described as one in a million.
5) Mr Johnson's team's political and ideological calculation is very simple - keeping the promise to leave is more important to them than the potential damage of leaving without a deal. It's a fundamental, historic and risky judgement, but it is clear.
6) The government plans a huge focus now on trying to prepare for and manage those risks and, in the next few weeks, a new structure of doing so is likely to emerge, with Theresa May's labyrinthine committee systems being put to bed.
7) The key ministers in all this are likely to be Michael Gove, reunited with his controversial policy chief - now, of course, Boris Johnson's senior adviser - Dominic Cummings, and Chancellor Sajid Javid.
8) There will be a big-spending and tax-cutting Budget, whatever happens in early talks with the EU. It might even be in the first couple of weeks back in Parliament in September, and if not, likely soon after the Conservative Party conference.
Mr Johnson's team know that Labour is in a tricky position on Brexit too, and if the Tories also turn on the spending taps, they hope it's harder for them to oppose.
9) The timing of that Budget is crucial, as it's just weeks before the first official EU summit in the middle of October. Note, too, that summit is less than a fortnight before the 31 October deadline - very little time afterwards, therefore, for MPs to try to stop a prime minister intent on taking us out without a deal if the talks have been inconclusive.
10) Before that summit I expect Number 10 will do everything it can to stop Parliament passing a law that would block no deal.
If it does, and there's no deal from the EU, Boris Johnson would not hesitate to call an election if it's the only way.
Just like leaving without a deal, it's not what his team wants. But again, sticking to the Halloween deadline to leave is what matters to them above all else.
If risking an election is what it takes to do so, as things stand at the moment, it's entirely likely that after only a few months in Number 10, that is what the new prime minister would choose to do.
There are, of course, multiple scenarios - lots of things that could go on that list, lots of ifs and buts.
Politics is febrile and unpredictable at the moment. Predictions very likely to be wrong. But if you've been following all of this on here for the last few months, or even years, you might feel a bit exhausted by it.
I hope, like me you're getting a bit of respite in the summer, it might be even more frenetic on the other side.
Thanks for joining me on here - more in September.
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The last year has been a bumpy one for South Africa's President Jacob Zuma. Mr Zuma has appeared to veer from one crisis to another. The latest being the negative effect to the economy after the controversial sacking of his internationally respected finance minister. Yet as the BBC's Alastair Leithead finds he is far from out. | South Africa is in for a rough ride as the ruling African National Congress prepares to choose President Jacob Zuma's successor.
His critics want him to resign or be dismissed well before the next election in 2019, either through a vote of no confidence in parliament, or with ANC action.
But the party of struggle is protecting a president who is clinging on, despite corruption scandals, criticism from the constitutional court and street protests demanding he must fall.
So what's the future of President Zuma and how will that impact South Africa?
On the immediate horizon is the vote of no confidence.
Demanded by the opposition and originally scheduled for just after Easter, the vote has been postponed pending a Constitutional Court decision.
The country's top judges will decide whether the MPs' ballot should be secret.
If it is, ANC MPs might worry less about their jobs and more about their consciences, and the long term future of the party.
This will be the fifth time Mr Zuma will face such a vote and it would take a big revolt within the ruling party for him to be sacked.
While cracks are opening, the formidable ANC machinery is once again rallying behind the president.
"Thank you comrade president," the ANC's deputy secretary general Jessie Duarte told the crowd at his 75th birthday party in Soweto a fortnight ago.
"Thank you for the dignity you have shown in the face of many, many years of being insulted for who you are and what you stand for," she said, to cheers and applause.
But who exactly does President Zuma stand for?
Is it the poor and struggling masses the ANC has a commitment to help, or is his leadership more about enriching himself and his close supporters?
It all depends on who you ask.
There have been a series of corruption scandals and allegations of so-called state capture by the wealthy Indian-born business brothers - the Guptas - who are seen as having undue influence over politics and procurement deals.
The Guptas, deny having undue influence or benefitting from close ties with the President's family.
But talk to people in President Zuma's heartland in rural KwaZulu-Natal and the support for their man is unwavering.
"Those who say he should step down? Nooooo," a woman at a local clinic said, a small baby tied to her back.
"Everyone does corruption. Everyone. Even I do corruption. Let's just leave him until he stands down," she said.
President Zuma is due to be replaced as leader of the ANC at a big party conference in December.
If the party goes on to win the 2019 election, the presidency is then handed to the anointed successor.
An ANC win has never seriously been in question, but the ever increasing criticism of President Zuma and the ANC's falling support in last year's municipal elections must at least be making senior figures nervous.
"To us he is an innocent man, he is a champion for economic transformation of this country," said Thanduxolo Sabelo, the ANC Youth League provincial secretary in KwaZulu-Natal.
"President Zuma represents the majority of the people in this country who remain in poverty whom we believe, as our champion, will be able to uplift us from poverty."
The rhetoric is now "radical economic transformation" to remove "white minority capital".
While land reform is overdue, calls of "take back the land" and the president describing white South Africans as racists are popular rallying calls.
Some critics believe he is hanging on, despite the pressure and the street protests, because he wants to be able to influence the decision on who will replace him.
"The gracious thing for him to do right now is to be asked to be relieved of his duties," said Sheila Sisulu, the daughter-in-law of anti-apartheid hero Walter Sisulu.
She is one of the struggle stalwarts who have publically raised concerns over corruption among some ANC leaders.
"I think there are a lot of vested interests around him," she said, referring to more than 780 charges a court is deciding whether to reinstate against the president.
"He needs to play for time so that his successor, if he is successful in anointing one, would be willing to delay or protect or deflect the charges."
Perhaps the most poignant symbol of this loss of faith among the ANC old guard was at the recent funeral of anti-apartheid hero Ahmed Kathrada.
A year before his death Mr Kathrada had written an open letter calling for the president to resign and had asked Mr Zuma not attend the burial.
Former President Kgalema Motlanthe read out that letter, over his coffin, which was draped in an ANC flag.
It would be expected that many of Mr Zuma's opponents want to see him leave now, but even some of his allies criticised his sacking of respected Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan at the end of last month.
That act led the country's credit rating to be downgraded to junk status.
Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa has recently ramped up his criticism of the president, calling for a judicial commission of inquiry into state capture.
He has unofficially launched his bid for the presidency, to keep up with the president's ex-wife Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, who already appears to be on the campaign trail.
To add to the problems, cracks are appearing in the tripartite alliance - made up of the South African Communist Party (SACP), the ANC and the trades union federation, Cosatu - which has run the country since the end of apartheid in 1994.
The SACP has taken a strong stand against the president; Cosatu was also critical, but has recently gone quiet; but the top echelons of the ANC have simply closed ranks.
Critics say it is because they are all entrenched in the system and have too much to lose.
At his birthday party there was no doubt President Zuma still oozes charisma.
Singing a rousing solo, dancing on stage and delivering a long and passionate speech in Zulu he is appealing to his base.
As long as he keeps the core support of the party, and his people, it seems unlikely any vote of no confidence will succeed or that he will be leaving a moment before his time is up.
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If Donald Trump becomes US president, he says he's going to deport all refugees of the Syrian civil war who have been allowed on US soil. His justification for such a move has drawn criticism for being based on questionable evidence and sketchy numbers, however. | Anthony ZurcherNorth America reporter@awzurcheron Twitter
During a campaign stop in Keene, New Hampshire, on Wednesday night, the New York billionaire warned of what he saw as a possible "200,000-man army" of so-called Islamic State sympathisers entering the US under the guise of refugees.
"Did you ever see a migration like that?" he asked. "They're all men. And they're all strong looking guys! Did you see it? They're walking, and there are so many men there aren't that many women, and I'm saying to myself, why aren't they fighting to save Syria? Why are they migrating all over Europe?"
Mr Trump's comments on the Syrian refugee crisis echo similar statements by politicians around the world. Winston Peters, head of the centre-right New Zealand First Party, objected to admitting male Syrian refugees.
"Let's bring the women and children and tell some of the men to go back and fight for their own country's freedom," he said.
During a Canadian leaders' debate in September, Prime Minister Stephen Harper was attacked by his two opponents in the upcoming general election for not admitting more refugees.
"These guys would have had, in the last two weeks, us throwing open our borders and literally hundreds of thousands of people coming without any kind of security check or documentation," he said, calling such a move "an enormous mistake".
During his remarks in Keene, Mr Trump added that such a secret army could be "one of the great tactical ploys of all time" - and that a President Trump would foil it.
"I know a lot of people will say, 'Oh that's not nice,'" he said. "We can't afford to be nice."
Mr Trump's assertions appear drawn, in part, from the realm of internet memes, viral Facebook posts and right-wing commentary that have portrayed the refugees flooding out of the Middle East as largely composed of young male militants.
Earlier this month photos purported to be of an IS-fighter-turned-refugee were shared by tens of thousands before being debunked by the BBC.
Another series of photos allegedly showed muscle-bound Syrian men posing as refugees, but in reality the images came from Australia.
Vice writer Philip Kleinfeld found that a photo of young Syrian men walking through a Munich train station accompanied by text alleging that they left "women and children in a war zone" was taken from a video that showed the crowd contained many women and children as well.
Conservative media in the US have also picked up on these themes. Radio host Rush Limbaugh said last month that the Syrian refugees might be IS "sleepers".
"Obama's flying Syrian refugees into this country, and it's the same demographic makeup," he said. "Eighty percent male, most of them military age: 18, 21, 22, somewhere around there."
Conservative author Kurt Schlichter, writing for IJReview, called the male refugees "cowards" who are leaving behind women and children.
"America is supposed to be the Home of the Brave, not the Hostel of the Gutless," he writes.
The number of Syrian refugees arriving in Europe via the Mediterranean Sea is about 70% male of unspecified age - perhaps a reflection of the dangers of travel on overloaded boats. Of the 4 million total Syrians dislocated by the civil war, however, the UN Refugee Agency estimates that slightly more than half are female.
"It's a helluva thing, decrying the courage of people facing categories of hardship no native-born American has had to endure," writes Matt Welch of the libertarian Reason Magazine. "Should those Jews have just stayed in Russia in the 1980s? Should the boat people have instead stood their ground against the likes of Pol Pot?"
It's not clear where Mr Trump gets the 200,000 number for US-bound refugees. The US has granted entry to 1,500 Syrians so far - of which 52% are male. Secretary of State John Kerry has proposed increasing the annual number of refugees from around the world granted residency in the US to 100,000 by 2017, but there's no indication that the male-female ratio would change substantially.
Elsewhere on the US presidential campaign trail, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush offered a sharp response to Mr Trump's comments.
"Send them all back? To a hellhole?" Mr Bush said. "This is the same guy, by the way, that is also advocating exactly what seems to be supportive of Putin and his emergence in Syria. That's not the proper policy for the United States."
Gut-reaction statements by Mr Trump shouldn't come as much of a surprise, given that the success of his candidacy has been premised on his non-PC, tell-it-like-he-sees-it style of improvised speechmaking.
Last week Mr Trump took a swipe at a fellow presidential aspirant, Florida Senator Marco Rubio, for apparently being a little too studious when it comes to foreign policy.
"Look, Marco Rubio sits behind a desk sometimes, and he reads stuff, and he's in committees," Mr Trump said. "That's all he does. I create jobs all day long. I'll know more about all of this than all of them put together."
Unlike Mr Rubio, Mr Trump asserts he has a "winning strategy" for Syria - although he maintains that he's keeping it to himself so IS won't know what's coming.
Except for any Syrian refugees currently living in the US, of course.
Candidates in (and out of) the Republican presidential field
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Your child has a raging thirst and is rapidly losing weight. What could be behind it - it couldn't be diabetes - could it?
In this week's Scrubbing Up, Barbara Young, chief executive of Diabetes UK, says there needs to be more awareness of the symptoms of Type 1 diabetes, so it can be detected more quickly to prevent children from becoming seriously unwell. | By Barbara YoungDiabetes UK chief executive
The idea of rushing your child to hospital and then watching them fight for their life is the stuff of parents' nightmares.
Yet for hundreds of parents every year in the UK, that is the reality of a diagnosis for Type 1 diabetes.
Some children become so unwell that they fall unconscious and a small number even die.
This is horrendous enough, but what is really shocking is that the 500 children a year who become seriously ill with something called diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA) are doing so unnecessarily.
In Type 1 diabetes DKA happens due to the severe lack of insulin which upsets the body's normal chemical balance leading to the production of poisonous chemicals called ketones, the build-up of which can be fatal if left unchecked.
'A matter of days'
But Type 1 diabetes has some really obvious symptoms.
Children who develop it typically need to urinate a lot; are very thirsty; lose weight quickly; and feel very tired.
By picking up on all or any of these symptoms and getting a doctor to do a test, a parent can ensure their child starts getting treatment before DKA has a chance to develop.
That can happen in a matter of days.
Parents need to be aware of the dangers signs - the four Ts - Toilet, Thirsty, Tired and Thinner.
But that's only part of the picture.
One of the things that's most shocking about diagnosis of Type 1 diabetes is that in some cases parents do identify the symptoms and ask for a test but are told by their GP that it is probably just a virus or infection and that they should come back in a week if symptoms persist.
Sometimes, that decision to "watch and wait" results in children developing DKA and could even be fatal.
High glucose warning
So why are medical practitioners not diagnosing Type 1?
The first thing is that they might not be aware of the symptoms themselves.
Around 90% of parents don't know all the Ts, and it is likely that this lack of awareness also extends to healthcare professionals.
But perhaps it's more likely that Type 1 diabetes isn't at the forefront of their minds.
About 2,000 children a year are diagnosed with the condition, though when you divide that by the number of GPs in the UK, it is clear that many of them could go some years without seeing a case.
We will be working with healthcare professionals - particularly GPs, practice nurses, and accident and emergency staff - to ensure they take the precautionary approach of giving every child with any one of these symptoms a test for Type 1.
Then if that test shows that the child has abnormally high glucose levels, that child should be referred to a specialist paediatric diabetes team the same day, as any delay can result in DKA.
It is possible for us to help the hundreds of children with Type 1 diabetes - and help them avoid the trauma of DKA.
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Plugging gadgets into a socket in the wall, or loading them with batteries - or maybe even unfurling a solar panel - is how most of us think of getting electricity. But what about plugging them into your body? | By David CohenTechnology Reporter
It may sound far fetched, but under the shadow of the Alps, Dr Serge Cosnier and his team at the Joseph Fourier University of Grenoble have built a device to do just that. Their gadget, called a biofuel cell, uses glucose and oxygen at concentrations found in the body to generate electricity.
They are the first group in the world to demonstrate their device working while implanted in a living animal. If all goes to plan, within a decade or two, biofuel cells may be used to power a range of medical implants, from sensors and drug delivery devices to entire artificial organs. All you'll need to do to power them up is eat a candy bar, or drink a coke.
Biofuel cells could kick-start a revolution in artificial organs and prosthetics that would transform tens of thousands of lives every year.
A new range of artificial, electrically-powered organs are now under development, including hearts, kidneys, and bladder sphincter, and work has begun on fully-functioning artificial limbs such as hands, fingers, and even eyes. But they all have one Achilles heel: they need electricity to run.
Batteries are good enough for implants that don't need much power, but they run out fast, and when it comes to implants, that is more than just an inconvenience, it is a fundamental limitation.
Even devices that do not use much power, such as pacemakers, have a fixed lifespan because they rely on batteries.
They usually need their power packs replaced 5 years after implantation. One study in the US found that one in five 70 year-olds implanted with a pacemaker, survived for another 20 years - meaning this group needed around 3 additional operations after the initial implant, just to replace the battery.
Each operation is accompanied by the risk of the complications of surgery, not something anybody should have to face if it is avoidable.
Other devices such as artificial kidneys, limbs or eyes, would have such high energy demands that users would have to change their power source every few weeks to keep them working. It is simply impractical to use batteries in these devices.
That is where biofuel cells come in. Dr Cosnier and his team are one of a growing number of researchers around the world developing the technology in an attempt to side-step this inherent limitation.
Bodily fluids
At heart, biofuel cells are incredibly simple. They are made of two special electrodes - one is endowed with the ability to remove electrons from glucose, the other with the ability to donate electrons to molecules of oxygen and hydrogen, producing water.
Pop these electrodes into a solution containing glucose and oxygen, and one will start to rip electrons off the glucose and the other will start dumping electrons onto oxygen. Connect the electrodes to a circuit and they produce a net flow of electrons from one electrode to the other via the circuit - resulting in an electrical current.
Glucose and oxygen are both freely available in the human body, so hypothetically, a biofuel cell could keep working indefinitely. "A battery consumes the energy stored in it, and when it's finished, it's finished. A biofuel cell in theory can work without limits because it consumes substances that come from physiological fluids, and are constantly being replenished," said Dr Cosnier.
The idea of powering fuel cells using glucose and oxygen found in physiological fluids was first suggested in the 1970s, but fell by the wayside because the amount of energy early prototypes produced was too little to be of practical use.
However, in the 2002, advances in biotechnology spurred Itamar Willner, a researcher at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, to dust down the idea and give it a fresh look.
In a paper published in the prestigious journal Science, he speculated that thanks to advances in biotechnology, the day would come when devices such as artificial limbs and organs would soon be powered by biofuel cells that create electricity from bodily fluids.
"Since then biofuel cells have received a huge amount of attention," said Dr Eileen Yu, a researcher at Newcastle University, who is part of UK-wide multi-university project to develop biofuel cells.
Nano technology
The key to the recent breakthroughs has been our understanding of rather special biological molecules called enzymes. Enzymes are naturally occurring molecules that speed up chemical reactions. Researchers studying bio fuel cells have discovered that one particular enzyme, called glucose oxidase, is extremely good at removing electrons from glucose. "It is very efficient at generating electrons," said Prof Willner.
Spurred by new developments in enzyme manipulation, and the growth in availability of carbon nanotubes - which are highly efficient electrical conductors - many groups around the world have developed bio fuel cells capable of producing electricity.
Dr Cosnier and his team decided to take things one step further. "In the last 10 years there has been an exponential increase in research, and some important breakthroughs in enzyme research," he said.
He decided it was time to make the first attempt to take the cumulative knowledge of the last decade of research and engineer it into a device the size of a grain of rice that could generate electricity while implanted inside a rat.
In 2010, they tested their fuel cell in a rat for 40 days and reported that it worked flawlessly, producing a steady electrical current throughout, with no noticeable side effects on the rat's behaviour or physiology.
Their system is surprisingly straightforward. The electrodes are made by compressing a paste of carbon nanotubes mixed with glucose oxidase for one electrode, and glucose and polyphenol oxidase for the other.
The electrodes have a platinum wire inserted in them to carry the current to the circuit. Then the electrodes are wrapped in a special material that prevents any nanotubes or enzymes from escaping into the body.
Finally, the whole package is wrapped in a mesh that protects the electrodes from the body's immune system, while still allowing the free flow of glucose and oxygen to the electrodes. The whole package is then implanted in the rat.
"It is an important step towards demonstrating the translation of basic research into a practical device," said Willner. "It shows the feasibility of making an implantable package."
Implantation in a rat was a good proof of concept, said Dr Cosnier, but it had drawbacks. "Rats are so small that the production of energy is insufficient to power a conventional device."
Next he plans to scale up his fuel cell and implant it in a cow. "There is more space, so a larger fuel cell can be implanted, meaning a greater current will be generated."
Dr Cosnier hopes it will be enough to power a transmitter that will be able to beam out of the cow information about the device and control sensors inside the animal.
More power
There is still a long way to go. Prof Willner explains that, while the enzyme glucose oxidase has performed optimally, the efficiency of the electron-donating enzymes could still be dramatically improved. He is optimistic that breakthroughs will be made.
"Based on the current rate of progress, I am confident we will see exciting developments in the next decade," said Prof Willner.
Dr Cosnier agrees that there is a lot of room for improvement. "Today we can generate enough power to supply an artificial urinary sphincter, or pacemaker. We are already working on a system that can produce 50 times that amount of power, then we will have enough to supply much more demanding devices," he said.
Implants aren't the only place you may find bio fuel cells in the future. The electronics giant Sony recently announced that it had created a biofuel cell fuelled with glucose and water that was capable of powering an MP3 player. "In 10 years time you may see bio fuel cells in laptops and mobile phones," said Prof Willner.
Dr Cosnier points out that bio fuel cells would be especially useful in places where there is no electricity supply to recharge your batteries. "If you were in a country without electricity, and needed to re-charge a bio fuel cell, all you would have to do is add sugar and water."
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The autumn party conference season is over for another year.
| Here are the highlights from the past six weeks, as Britain's political parties gathered together to debate issues, decide policy and to socialise.
The Conservative Party - 1-3 October in Birmingham
Theresa May promised the end of austerity was in sight as she urged her party to put their Brexit divisions behind them and take the fight to Labour.
In her closing leader's speech, the prime minister said the Conservatives must not be the party for the few nor the many, but for everyone who worked hard.
She announced plans to free up councils to borrow against their assets to fund house building, action to save lives through earlier cancer diagnoses and investment in scanning plus another year's freeze in fuel duty.
In a generally well-received performance, which began with her sashaying her way on to the stage to the strains of Abba's Dancing Queen, the PM signalled more money for public services after next year's Spending Review.
On Brexit, which dominated the conference, she did not mention her much-criticised Chequers plan by name but warned critics that by holding out for the perfect deal they risked ending up not leaving at all.
This was, in large part, a riposte to former foreign secretary Boris Johnson, who a day earlier told a large fringe crowd that Mrs May's strategy was undemocratic and would "cheat" those who voted for Brexit in 2016.
Mr Johnson, who quit the cabinet in July, prompted renewed talk of a leadership bid by attacking Mrs May's reform of stop and search powers when she was home secretary and calling for a tax-cutting agenda.
While talk of a May-Johnson face-off garnered most of the week's headlines and many ministers found themselves greeted by sparse crowds on the conference floor, there were a string of announcements made.
These included an emergency £240m social car package to enable more elderly people to be cared for at home, a pilot scheme to cut down on food waste and a ban on combustible cladding in all new residential buildings, as well as schools and hospitals, over 60ft in height.
Labour - 23-26 September in Liverpool
Jeremy Corbyn ended the week in Liverpool by telling supporters Labour was ready to return to government, with a "radical plan to rebuild and transform our country".
The Labour leader vowed to end the "greed-is-good" culture he said had dominated politics for decades, saying his party's promise of greater state intervention in the markets was the "new common sense of our time".
He also offered to back Theresa May if she presented a "sensible" Brexit deal to MPs for approval.
He used his keynote speech to announce some new policies - such as on childcare and green jobs - but it was mainly a chance to rally the troops for another general election, which Labour wants above all.
The most significant event of the week, in policy terms, was members' decision to back a new Brexit policy stating that all options should remain on the table, including the possibility of another referendum.
The party's Brexit spokesman, Sir Keir Starmer, caused a stir when he told activists that nobody should rule out the option of remaining in the EU being on the ballot paper in a future referendum - a view that is not shared by some in the party.
On the economic front, Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell announced the water industry in England would be the first to be re-nationalised under Labour while all large firms would be forced to give workers shares worth up to £500 a year each - a plan for "inclusive ownership funds" immediately attacked by business.
There were no major rows - and there were plenty of "Oh Jeremy Corbyn" chants - although the party was criticised for dropping plans to create a second deputy leader position, to be filled by a woman, following opposition from left-wing campaign groups.
The SNP - 7-9 October in Glasgow
Nicola Sturgeon called for "pragmatism and patience" from independence supporters in her leader's speech to the SNP conference.
The Scottish first minister said she was "more confident than ever" that Scotland would become independent one day.
She added that members must "wait for the fog of Brexit to clear" and work to win over people who voted No in the 2014 independence referendum.
She also announced new policies on nursing, infrastructure, fair work and support for the homeless.
As they met in Glasgow, the party confirmed its 35 MPs at Westminster would vote in favour of a new referendum on Brexit, were such a question to be tabled in the UK Parliament.
Paraphrasing Winston Churchill while decrying Brexiteer "ideologues", Ms Sturgeon said that "never has so much been lost by so many to satisfy so few".
Liberal Democrats - 15-18 September in Brighton
In his second keynote speech to conference as their leader, Sir Vince Cable said the UK's exit from the European Union was "not inevitable" and must be stopped.
He claimed there was a growing realisation that Brexit would be "costly and painful", particularly in a no-deal scenario, and urged Jeremy Corbyn to get behind the cross-party campaign for another referendum.
Much of the coverage following the speech surrounded the phrase "erotic spasm".
The headline-grabbing attack on Brexiteers was included in the trail of the speech released the night before but Sir Vince somewhat mangled it during its delivery and the words came out as "exotic spresm".
Elsewhere, anti-Brexit campaigner Gina Miller - touted as a possible successor to Sir Vince - told the party she was their friend but not a leader-in-waiting as she was not even a party member.
UKIP - 21-22 September in Birmingham
UKIP should become a "radical, populist party" standing up for free speech against the "politically-correct thought police", its leader Gerard Batten told party activists.
As the party met in Birmingham, it published an "interim manifesto" urging a "clean exit" from the EU, the abolition of stamp duty and inheritance tax, new grammar schools, scrapping the overseas aid budget and BBC licence fee and an end to guidelines on "subjective" hate crimes.
Mr Batten, the party's sixth leader since the Brexit referendum, said these policies were aimed at low and middle-income families and small businesses which "form the backbone of Britain".
The Green Party of England and Wales - 5-7 October in Bristol
The Green Party unveiled a series of policies which they said could help them overtake the Lib Dems as the third largest party in England and Wales while offering a "real alternative" to Labour.
Among them were a "Free Time Index" to measure the UK's "well-being", as an alternative to traditional economic indicators and paid training leave for all workers to boost skills and reduce staff turnover.
Co-leader Sian Berry said this was "radical common sense for the common good". On Brexit, she said momentum behind calls for a new referendum "feels absolutely unstoppable".
Her co-leader Jonathan Bartley called for a total "system overhaul" to deal with the threat from climate change saying his party would no longer "debate with climate-change deniers because there isn't time".
Plaid Cymru - 5-6 October in Cardigan
Welsh independence must be "on the table" after Brexit, Adam Price told activists in his first major speech since being elected leader.
Comparing Brexit to the Titanic disaster, he warned that Wales could find itself "at the mercy of Westminster" if the UK left the EU's single market and customs union.
Domestically, he promised a "new vision" for health and social care, with reviews to examine the creation of a National Care Service and whether GPs should continue to act as private operators.
If it won power, he said Plaid would build a "National Western Rail Line" from Swansea to Bangor, and introduce a "comprehensive child package" so parents could return to work when they choose.
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Counter-terrorism police in Leeds have arrested a man on suspicion of the commission, preparation and instigation of terrorist acts.
| The 33-year-old was arrested on Saturday and is being held as part of a pre-planned operation into suspected extreme right-wing activity, West Yorkshire Police said.
The force added that a property in Leeds was being searched by officers.
Supt Chris Bowen said public safety was their "top priority".
He added: "If you see or hear something that could be terrorist related, act on your instincts by reporting your concerns."
Latest news and stories from Yorkshire
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The Chancellor is attempting a delicate balancing act. | Simon JackBusiness editor@BBCSimonJackon Twitter
Slowly withdrawing very expensive government support programmes without crashing the economy.
The government is currently paying 80% of the wages of nearly 8.5 million employees and 80% of 2.3 million self employed worker's take home pay till the end of July at cost in the many tens of billions of pounds.
As the economy emerges from lockdown that will change.
From 1 July, employers will be able to bring in workers part-time and pay them for the time worked. That is a month early, has been widely called for and will be welcomed.
Then the hard part starts. From August, employers will have to pay National Insurance and pension costs for furloughed workers. From September, those contributions plus 10% of their wages and from 1 October, employers must pay 20% until the scheme ends at the end of the month.
Crucially, If employers don't contribute - neither will the government.
Cash-strapped employers must decide if they can take on an increasing burden to keep workers for whom there may be little or no work.
The chancellor said the government couldn't go on meeting the full cost of the scheme.
The hospitality industry has been particularly hard hit by the lockdown, and it will face further difficulties because of the need to maintain social distancing and potential future customer reticence to return when pubs and restaurants reopen.
No special treatment
The chancellor resisted calls for special treatment of this or other hard-hit sectors. David Moore is a restaurateur who owns the Michelin-starred Pied a Terre, in London. He's worried the additional costs announced by the chancellor could mean jobs would be lost.
"It would be a real shame if the retention scheme turned out to be a very, very glorified waiting room for the unemployed. And I feel that if we come back with any level of uncertainty - a lot of businesses will cut harder and further than maybe they thought of doing first"
There was also an important announcement for self employed - who got a cash grant for March - June capped at £7,500. They will now get a maximum and final payment of £6,570 in August.
The withdrawal is more gradual than many had feared and the government hopes that the support withdrawal will be mirrored by business demand recovering.
But we may be about to find out how many real jobs are left in the post-coronavirus economy.
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Three-quarters of the world's homes have a fridge - an appliance that can revolutionise a family's life. A tailor in one Indian village has just become the first person in his community to own one - something he has dreamed of for 10 years. | By Sanjoy MajumderBBC News, Calcutta
Santosh Chowdhury is pacing up and down speaking into his mobile phone.
"How much longer? It's left past the auto-rickshaw stand, yes that's right," he shouts, and then continues his nervous pacing.
It's a big day for him and indeed for the village of Rameshwarpur, just outside Calcutta in north-east India.
Santosh has bought a new fridge - not just his first but also the first in the entire community of 200 people. "Owning a fridge is quite rare in a village like ours," he says.
The lack of fridges in Rameshwarpur reflects the situation across the whole of India. Only one in four of the country's homes has one. That compares to an average of 99% of households in developed countries.
But change can be rapid when linked to an emerging middle class. In 2004, 24% of households in China owned a fridge. Ten years later this had shot up to 88%.
"Ours is the first generation to own a fridge in my family," says Santosh. "No one in my father's and grandfather's time had ever seen one."
Rameshwarpur has a distinctly rural feel. People bathe in a pond in the middle of the village, children fly kites in the dusty lanes. The homes are little more than simple huts, made of mud and brick. But the village has electricity and many houses have televisions.
Santosh works as a tailor. He lives in a modest, two-room hut which doubles as his home and workplace. "I don't have a regular job as such," he says. "Sometimes I also work part-time in a factory. I make about three to four dollars a day."
Life is quite hard, especially for his wife Sushoma.
She cooks lunch, stirring a pot of rice on a wood fire outside their hut. It's something she does every day because they have no way of storing leftovers. So Santosh has to go the market early each morning to shop for groceries.
He's always wanted to make life easier for his wife and has been dreaming of buying a fridge for 10 years. "Owning one will be so convenient," he says. "You don't have to buy vegetables every day, you can store food - especially in the summer."
So he's been saving hard, putting away a bit of money every month for a purchase that costs more than a month's salary. "I don't make that much money, that's why it's taken me so long. But now I have enough," he says, smiling.
At one of Calcutta's high street stores, about 15km from his home, Santosh had several models to choose from. Peering inside, he ran his fingers along the side of a bright red model.
"It was quite confusing. It was my first time you know. I couldn't figure out which one to get," he says shyly. "My wife wanted a red one. I wanted one that will consume the least power. We need to keep our bills down."
Finally, the deal was struck. Santosh got a discount because it was the final week of the winter sales. The price was 11,000 rupees (£120) - but more importantly, he was able to pay in instalments, having paid just under half the money up front.
"No one pays cash any more like they used to," says store manager Pintoo Mazumdar. "Everyone can get a loan from the bank or the store - all you need is a bank statement and ID. That's why so many lower income people can afford to buy a fridge these days."
FRIDGEONOMICS
Fridge ownership around the world
76%
Global average
65% Asia Pacific
99% Europe and North America
87% Latin America
63% Middle East and Africa
Santosh's fridge finally arrives on the back of a cycle rickshaw. He walks along next to it with a broad smile. Many of the villagers come out on to the lane as well, craning their necks to get a better look.
"Careful, careful," he cries out as a couple of them help carry the fridge into his house.
Then it's time for a religious ceremony.
His wife applies a dab of vermillion to the fridge, to keep away evil spirits, and then blows on a conch shell to seek divine blessings and welcome the fridge into their home. The fridge has pride of place - next to Santosh's sewing machine and their tiny television set.
They simply cannot stop smiling.
"We've dreamt of this moment for so long," says his wife Sushoma. "Some of our neighbours have already asked us if they, too, can store some food in our fridge. "And I can't wait to drink cold water in the summer."
As Santosh shows off his fridge everyone crowds around, excited. "Imagine, they won't have to shop for fresh vegetables every day," says one woman. "I'm thinking of getting one too," another man says.
It's a special moment for the Chowdhurys. This acquisition could potentially transform their lives. "I can focus on finding more work and not worry about buying food for the family," Santosh says. "My wife will get more free time and perhaps she can give me a hand as well."
With those words, he opens his fridge and places the first contents inside - tomatoes, an aubergine, eggs and some milk.
For more on the BBC's A Richer World, go to www.bbc.com/richerworld - or join the discussion on Twitter using the hashtag #BBCRicherWorld.
Subscribe to the BBC News Magazine's email newsletter to get articles sent to your inbox.
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Work to repair a landslip which has caused access problems for residents in an Aberdeenshire coastal village will begin next week. | A temporary retaining wall built at Harbour Road in Gardenstown - the only road access to the lower part of the village - partially collapsed last month.
The road has been largely closed since November.
A contractor has now been appointed to carry out the work above Harbour Road.
Aberdeenshire Council said the work, which will start on Monday, is expected to take about seven weeks.
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After its first travel ban was indefinitely bogged down by court challenges, the Trump administration has returned with a more detailed, narrowly focused order. That doesn't mean it won't meet the same fate, however. | Anthony ZurcherNorth America reporter@awzurcheron Twitter
The action, which suspends new visas to nationals from six majority Muslim nations for 90 days and halts the processing of new refugees for 120 days, is still a marked change of US policy. It will also, undoubtedly, be challenged quickly in US courts.
The pressing question is whether those challenges will result in the order being suspended during legal proceedings, or if it will be allowed to take effect while lawyers file their briefs and slog it out in oral arguments.
Unlike the first order, the new effort was clearly written with the input of government lawyers and not just policy operatives like White House advisers Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller. The order addresses many of the previous ban's legal vulnerabilities and takes into account the court rulings that scuttled the previous incarnation.
Multiple agencies were consulted in its drafting, and the rollout has been much more deliberate. The announcement was delayed twice, for instance, after Mr Trump first indicated that it was coming within days of his 16 February press conference.
The Seattle-based federal judge who granted an initial suspension of the original 27 January travel ban said he acted with urgency because the presidential memorandum violated the rights to due process of US citizens and legal immigrants by casting doubt on the validity of green cards issued to permanent US residents and existing travel visas. This was also the reason the Ninth Circuit US Court of Appeals upheld that injunction.
Those concerns have largely been remedied in this latest order, as the language makes clear that all existing immigration documents will be honoured. Unlike the original action, the new directive also delays implementation of the travel restrictions for 10 days, which will give border and customs agents, US diplomats and other government officials time to fully educate the public on the nature of the changes.
Both the Seattle court and the Ninth Circuit had cited the confusion surrounding the original action as a reason for putting it on hold.
The new order will still have an adverse impact on foreign students and workers from the six nations in question (Iraq has been removed from the list), as they may not be able to re-enter the US if they were to go home to visit family or friends. The situation for them, however, isn't nearly as dire as under the earlier order. There is also explicit permission given to government officials to grant visas to prohibited nationals on a "case-by-case" basis.
That leaves a First Amendment freedom of religion challenge as the most likely avenue for legal efforts to derail implementation of the new immigration order. On 14 February a federal judge suspended the original effort in Virginia because she said it was probably motivated by "religious prejudice" and not "rational national security concerns".
She cited Candidate Trump's December 2015 call for a blanket prohibition on the entry of all Muslims into the US, as well as comments by Trump advisers before and after the election, as evidence supporting this conclusion.
"The 'Muslim Ban' was a centrepiece of the president's campaign for months, and the press release calling for it was still available on his website as of the day this Memorandum Opinion is being entered," she wrote.
While the Ninth Circuit did not base its decision upholding the nationwide injunction on religious freedom grounds, the judges were clear that Mr Trump's past statements about Muslims could be taken into account in future legal proceedings.
"The States' claims raise serious allegations and present significant constitutional questions," the judges held, referring to the portion of the challenge to the order on religious grounds brought by the states of Washington and Minnesota.
Critics of the new order are already honing in on what they see as the religious aspect of the order - targeting six nations that are all majority Muslim - as its primary legal shortcoming.
The Trump administration, writes Omar Jadwat of the ACLU's Immigration Rights Project, has replaced the original "Muslim ban" with "a scaled-back version that shares the same fatal flaws".
"The only way to actually fix the Muslim ban is to not have a Muslim ban," he continues. "Instead, President Trump has recommitted himself to religious discrimination, and he can expect continued disapproval from both the courts and the people."
The Trump administration also has made some efforts to defend the new order against this challenge. Gone is the provision that would have given Christian minorities priority over Muslims when the 120-day suspension of the refugee program was lifted. Syria is no longer singled out for an indefinite refuge ban, as well.
When lawsuits are eventually filed, expect the parties to introduce plenty of evidence of Mr Trump's past support for anti-Muslim action, including his vociferous defence of the original immigration order. (This could explain why the president has taken a much lower profile in unveiling this new effort, signing the memorandum in a private ceremony and relying on Cabinet officials to explain the details).
Although the White House is showing restraint with this latest move, and the text of the new order says the previous attempt has been fully rescinded, the Trump team continues to defend the appropriateness and legality of the original action - a move that could complicate their legal defence going forward.
"Fundamentally, you're still going to have the same basic policy outcome for the country," White House's Miller said recently in a preview of the new order. It would be "responsive to a lot of very technical issues that were brought up by the court", he continued, while asserting that the original order was not "flawed".
That particular comment prompted a quick reply from the ACLU, which had challenged the original order.
"So then we will have the same basic response," it tweeted.
That's not quite Donald Trump's "we'll see you in court" bravado following the adverse decision by the Ninth Circuit in February - but the end result is the same.
Judges are going to have the final say.
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The two men named as suspects in the poisoning of Russian ex-spy Sergei Skripal in the UK - Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov - gave a surprise interview to RT, Russia's state-run international broadcaster.
They claimed they were merely tourists visiting the English town of Salisbury at the time the poisoning happened. Here are some key excerpts from their interview. | On what they were doing in Salisbury
"Our friends had been suggesting for a long time that we visit this wonderful town [Salisbury]," Mr Petrov said.
"It's a tourist town - there's a famous cathedral there. Salisbury cathedral," Mr Boshirov said.
"It's famous for its 123-metre spire, it's famous for its clock - the first clock to be invented in the world, and it's still going."
Asked if they had gone to Salisbury to look at the clock Mr Petrov said: "No, no - our plan from the outset was to arrive in London and chill out, basically. It wasn't a business trip. We planned to spend some time in London and travel to Salisbury - of course that was only intended to be a day-trip."
"We arrived in England on 2 March, then went to the railway station to see the timetable, to see where we could go," Mr Petrov said.
The pair planned to spend just a day in Salisbury, he said, because "that's enough - there's no more to do there after one day".
"We arrived in Salisbury on 3 March and tried to walk through the town, but as it was blocked up with snow we could only spend half an hour there," Mr Petrov said.
"Of course, we went there to see Stonehenge, Old Sarum, but we couldn't do it because there was muddy slush everywhere. The town was covered with this slush. We got soaked, went back to the station and took the next train back [to London]."
"We drank hot coffee because we were just soaked. The longest we spent there on the 3rd was one hour," Mr Boshirov added.
Mr Petrov said "we had the aim of visiting Old Sarum [an Iron Age settlement] and the cathedral and decided to finish all that on the 4th".
When asked if they saw those sights he said, "on the 4th, yes. We saw them, but again at lunchtime it started snowing heavily, so we left earlier than planned".
On whether they went to Sergei Skripal's house
"Maybe we did [approach] Skripal's house, but we don't know where is it located," Mr Boshirov said.
When the interviewer asked them whether they had Novichok or any poison with them, the men emphatically said no.
She then asked whether they had the Nina Ricci perfume bottle which UK investigators say contained the substance.
"For normal blokes, to be carrying women's perfume with us, isn't that silly? The customs are checking everything, they would have questions as to why men have women's perfume in their luggage. We didn't have it," Mr Boshirov said.
On why they shared a hotel room
The interviewer asked them why they went everywhere together and shared a hotel room.
"It's normal to arrive somewhere and share a twin-bed room. You save money. It's more fun to be together, simpler," Mr Boshirov said.
Both men sounded distressed as they spoke about how their lives had changed since they were named in the UK as Russian intelligence agents who attempted to poison the Skripals.
"When your life [is] turned upside down, you don't know what to do and where to go. We're afraid to go out, we fear for ourselves, for our lives and the lives of our loved ones," Mr Boshirov said.
"We just want to be left alone, we're tired," he said.
Asked whether they had recently been to any European state, the two said they had.
"Sure… In Switzerland, we were there a couple of times… We spent New Year in Switzerland."
On their alleged work activities
The pair said they had been in Europe to do business related to sports nutrition.
"We examine the market, see if there is something new - some biologically active additives, amino acids, vitamins, microelements. We pick up the most necessary things, come here and decide how to bring the new products from that market here."
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US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross is reportedly prone to dozing off in meetings. He's not the only one. So is there a trick to stopping those eyelids from suddenly feeling so, so heavy? | Meeting-induced sleepiness - it happens to the best of us.
Former vice-presidents Joe Biden and Dick Cheney; former Speaker of the House of Representatives Newt Gingrich; Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Clarence Thomas - all famous faces who have made headlines for being caught napping during speeches and meetings.
Mr Ross is the latest politician to be criticised for being reportedly unable to "stop falling asleep in meetings" at his department, according to Politico. But his staff denied his focus was so erratic that long meetings were avoided.
So how can you avoid the tempting pull of sleep during your next meeting - and how might you keep everyone awake the next time you have to lead one?
1. The right time...
Elise Keith, founder of Lucid Meetings, a US-based meeting coaching company, says that while time preferences may vary among individuals, research indicates that some periods may be better for achieving certain goals.
"Things like status updates and logical thinking - you want to do those earlier in the morning," she says. When impressing people is important - like status updates, sales demos, interviews - the morning, "when sharpness and enthusiasm are at their height", is best.
"Closer to the end of the day is a really good time for brainstorming... because the energy that you had in the morning has started to wear off," she says. "People loosen up, which is also what you want when you're trying to elicit cool ideas."
And of course, never do meetings in the "dead zone" period - right after lunch.
UK-based author and workplace culture expert Judi James, however, says the exact time "matters less than we think" and ensuring a meeting has a clearly stated end time is more important.
"We often fall asleep in meetings out of boredom, not tiredness."
2. ... and right place
While some sessions must take place wherever the work can get done, meeting in unconventional locations can help boost creativity.
Standing meetings - where, as the name suggests, participants talk without sitting down - have also been praised by many efficiency experts for keeping things efficient.
Ms Keith suggests walking meetings or spaces outside for more creative sessions.
3. Be prepared
"The kind of meeting that leaves people to fall asleep is one where they probably shouldn't be there in the first place... or where other people are talking at them," Ms Keith says.
"Have clarity of what the meeting is about and a plan for reaching the outcomes of that meeting, which then allows you to only invite relevant people."
One recent study found American workers on average felt just 33% of leaders were well-prepared for meetings. And most managers, Ms Keith notes, may spend 80% of their time in meetings without ever having been trained how to lead one.
Ensuring a clear agenda is a common piece of advice from productivity gurus.
Annette Catino, a healthcare executive and entrepreneur, told the New York Times an agenda was essential, "because if I don't know why we're in the meeting, and you don't know why we're there, then there's no reason for a meeting".
"One of the ways that people stay awake is that they're in a meeting that's interesting to them and relevant to their work."
And if you're not certain who should be there? Make the meetings optional and see who shows, Ms Keith suggests.
*If you're still with us, now might be a good time for a stand-up-and-stretch break.
4. Stay alert throughout the day
Ms James recommends standing up from your desk every half-hour or to stretch and "invigorate" yourself throughout the day.
And though some companies like Google, Ben & Jerry's ice cream, and online retailer Zappos, have offered employees spaces to get some shut eye during the work day, Ms James cautions that "power naps aren't always effective as they help you see the workplace as a sleep place".
5. To snack or not to snack?
While Ms James suggests turning down hot drinks or carb-heavy snacks before a meeting if you are prone to drowsiness, Ms Keith says the right kind of snacks can help improve meeting culture.
Snacks can keep people alert, for one thing, but are also a "symbol of caring" in many cultures.
"Why not bring that into your meetings? Why not show the people there that they are cared for, they belong, their wellbeing is something that matters to you?"
Of course, avoiding loud or smelly snacks is important, as is being mindful of participants' dietary restrictions.
6. Engage
Putting it simply - you can't fall asleep if you're participating.
"Speak up during the first three minutes," Ms James recommends. "It gets your voice into the room and allows you to feel like a contributor not a listener."
Ms James also suggests making active body language contributions - "nod , use eye contact, and non-verbal responses to what you hear".
Taking notes can also be helpful in keeping your brain alert.
"If the meeting is dragging on, make yourself the note taker, search for key points, decisions that seem to be getting made but nobody is articulating clearly," Ms Keith says.
"Raise your hand, interject, make sure they get called out. You can help other people be heard and ask questions."
For leaders, Ms James says make sure to adhere to the agenda and only the agenda - tacking on "other business", she warns, is "when the bores kick off".
7. Fidget away
When all else fails, keeping your hands busy can help.
Ms Keith's fidgeting tool of choice is a pipe cleaner - simple, and quiet, if a little odd.
Doodling is another longstanding go-to for bored meeting goers, but Ms James says it can make you even more drowsy.
Sometimes, it may just take a pinch on your own arm instead, she adds.
And if you do happen to nod off?
Both Ms James and Ms Keith agree, if you succumb to sleep, it may be best to leave.
"Make a swift excuse that doesn't sound attacking, and if possible, get up quietly, apologise and leave," Ms James recommends. And if you notice a colleague drifting off, only nudge them awake if you are friends.
And after any such meeting, Ms Keith emphasises the importance of providing honest feedback.
"If you're in there and you're sleeping because the meeting is so poorly planned, so disengaging, and such a big waste of your time, then that's a massive bit of wasted investment for your company and the leading cause of employee disengagement," she says.
"That's the kind of thing that makes people quit."
Reporting by Ritu Prasad
Here is a selection of your comments:
Whenever I feel I am beginning to doze in meetings, I immediately imagine my worst fear, which, for me, is being trapped in rubble after an earthquake. The adrenaline rush wakes me immediately. Paul Ketley, New Jersey, US
Old lawyer trick - lift one foot off the ground and you cannot fall asleep. Works when driving as well. Dan Todd, Tennessee, US
Eat Chinese salty plums. Really make you sit up and take notice. Judith Clark, Massachusetts, US
Drinking sips of water, I find, helps. Also chewing gum. I find it impossible to sleep whilst chewing! Andrew Halley, Cambridge, UK
My motto on meeting is: time limited and short. Staff have just two minutes or less to talk and I ask for bullet points...They only need to report on an exceptional issue, not what they are doing as part of their job... Lastly, keeping to a small group is the most productive way to go. Subrat Das, Bamako, Mali
If this happens to me I always say 'amen' upon waking, so that I can say I was praying and not sleeping. Grant H, Idaho, US
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An Arizona woman has said she was left "in tears and humiliated" after a staff member at US pharmacy chain Walgreens refused to give her prescription medication to end her pregnancy - even though her doctor had said she would ultimately have a miscarriage. | By Rebecca SealesBBC News
Nicole Mone had discovered at a doctor's appointment on Tuesday that her baby was not developing normally.
Knowing her two-month pregnancy would not run to term, she was given a choice to end it through a surgical procedure or prescription medication, and chose the latter.
When she went to a Walgreens in the city of Peoria to get her prescription, she says a pharmacist refused to serve her on moral grounds - a stance which is within the company's rules.
She told the BBC the staff member was "very short, not compassionate at all".
Ms Mone, 35, shared a picture of a business card identifying the pharmacist on social media.
The BBC contacted the store to seek a response from him, but was told he was not available.
"I stood at the mercy of this pharmacist explaining my situation in front of my 7-year-old and five customers standing behind, only to be denied because of his ethical beliefs," Ms Mone wrote on Facebook and Instagram.
"I get it, we all have our beliefs. But what he failed to understand is, this isn't the situation I had hoped for - this isn't something I wanted. This is something I have zero control over. He has no idea what it's like to want nothing more than to carry a child to full term and be unable to do so."
Ms Mone wrote that she had suffered a previous miscarriage.
She said her young son was left "trying to figure out what's going on, watching me get upset and trying to figure out why".
"I left Walgreens in tears, ashamed and feeling humiliated by a man who knows nothing of my struggles but feels it is his right to deny medication prescribed to me by my doctor," she wrote.
Ms Mone said she was sharing her story as she didn't want other women to endure similar experiences when they were "vulnerable and already suffering".
In a statement to the BBC, Walgreens said it was looking into the matter, and had "reached out to the patient and apologised for how the situation was handled".
It said company policy allowed its pharmacists to "step away from filling a prescription for which they have a moral objection".
In that situation, staff are required to refer the prescription to another pharmacist or manager "to meet the patient's needs in a timely manner".
Ms Mone said that did not reflect her experience, however, as the pharmacist "could have just passed me on to the lady that was standing next to him" - which she says did not happen.
Instead, the prescription was transferred to another Walgreens store. Ms Mone picked it up there after seeking her doctor's help to ensure the second pharmacy would give it to her.
She said that Walgreens had not reached out to her to apologise, but that a store manager said she was sorry when Ms Mone telephoned to flag up the incident a day later.
In an update to her original Facebook post, which had drawn 33,000 reactions at time of writing, Ms Mone said she had contacted Walgreens corporate office, and filed a complaint with the state Board of Pharmacy.
"Thank you to those who have shown love and support," she added.
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Khaled al-Asaad, the archaeologist who has reportedly been killed by Islamic State militants, had a lifelong connection to the town, having been born into a prominent family in the area in 1934. | Although curating the ruins at the Unesco World Heritage site would become his life's work and he had a degree in history from Damascus University, he had no formal training in archaeology - all his knowledge in this field was self-taught.
Archaeologist and former Syrian antiquities official Amr al-Azm, who knew Mr Asaad, told the BBC that he was an "icon of Palmyrene archaeology".
"If you needed to do anything in Palmyra with regards to the archaeology or the monuments, you had to go through Khaled al-Asaad. He was essentially 'Mr Palmyra'," Mr Azm said.
Mr Asaad was involved in the early excavation and restoration work at the site, and carried on this work for four decades.
"When you look at Palmyra today as an archaeological site, really that's the legacy of Khaled al-Asaad," Mr Azm says.
"We lost this great... resource of knowledge on Palmyra and its history, much acquired through personal, direct contact... the sort of information you could never get from a book or a lecture," he added.
One of the "crimes" IS apparently accused Mr Asaad of was working with the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.
He was a member of the ruling Baath Party but there is no clear evidence that he was an active supporter of the regime - anyone in any position of authority in Syria during this time had to be a party member.
When he retired in 2003, his son Walid took on the mantle of his work at the site - both were reportedly detained by IS last month.
Syrian antiquities chief Maamoun Abdulkarim told AFP that Mr Asaad's other son Mohammed and his son-in-law Khalil actively participated in the rescue of 400 antiquities as the town was being taken over by the jihadists in May.
Mr Abdul Karim said IS militants had tried to extract information from Mr Assad about where some treasures were hidden.
Some reports say that he was executed after refusing these requests.
Historian and writer Tom Holland said if the reports were true, Mr Asaad was "not just a martyr, but a hero.
"Islamic State is very keen on the idea of martyrdom, but if this is true, it shows that it is not only religiously inspired interpretations of the past that people feel are worth dying for."
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It's rare these days - especially as the referendum debate rages with both sides to varying degrees struggling to tell the public the truth, the whole truth, and absolutely nothing but the truth - that political figures are willing to say exactly what they think in public.
| Laura KuenssbergPolitical editor@bbclaurakon Twitter
But the union movement, in the recently elected boss of the GMB, Tim Roache, might just have found themselves someone who might.
He's worked for the union for decades, starting as a teenager in the post room. But after years of working his way up, now he's in charge, Roache is clearly determined to change things.
And in an interview with me for Radio 4's World at One programme, he didn't hold back.
A few days before his first union congress as leader, to use his phrase, he thinks unions must "freshen up" - he wants to make his union, and perhaps the whole movement, more relevant to his members and politics in a wider sense.
'Half-hearted Remain'
First things first, like many others in the Labour movement, he is worried the referendum could be lost because Labour voters simply stay at home - he describes himself as an "angry Remain", and the debate so far, as a "Tory bunfight", when it actually, he says matters hugely to workers and workers rights.
And although he supported Jeremy Corbyn for the leadership, he believes he is only a "half-hearted Remain", and urges him to take a more prominent position in the campaign.
What's more striking perhaps is Roache's obvious wider concern about the Labour Party. I ask if Labour is in the kind of shape it needs to be to win the next general election - "absolutely not", comes the answer, it has "failed to get its message across", he says.
Clearly, Roache believes the party's performance is not yet good enough and it has to improve.
After May's local elections, the GMB leader had warned that the party ought to have won many more seats. But as a Corbyn backer, and with anxieties across the Labour party about the leadership's approach to the referendum, this message can't be dismissed as the party's usual suspects going after him.
And Roache has an equally tough message for MPs who have groused about Mr Corbyn's leadership, warning that the party has been "tearing itself apart" and they have a responsibility to get behind the leader with his huge mandate from the membership.
Union voices matter - they don't just provide the Labour Party with much of its cash, but much of its power on the ground.
And on Trident, on how he wants unions to look different, whether Jeremy Corbyn should shave off his beard, he has plenty more to say. You can listen to my full interview with him on the World at One from 13:00 BST.
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All over the world, people flee in their millions from tyrannous regimes, but how often do they find the better life they were hoping for? In South Korea, statistics indicate that a startling number of defectors from the North end up taking their own lives. | By Stephen EvansBBC News, Seoul
You always hear of the celebrity defectors. They write best-selling books and appear on television. They can earn tens of thousands of dollars for an evening at a speaking engagement. They are eloquent as they tell their harrowing stories of dangerous flights from extreme oppression.
But there is sometimes a darker side to the stories of those who flee their homeland.
In South Korea, the statistics reveal a truth. The country's unification ministry says that over the past 10 years, 6% to 7% of defectors who have died killed themselves. But in recent months there has been a big rise - according to the ministry, 14% of deaths among defectors this year have been suicides. That is much higher than among the population in general, and South Korea consistently has the highest suicide rate of all the 34 industrialized countries in the OECD.
There are a number of factors involved. One is that the home they've left is close but unreachable. Another is that their new economic reality can be very different from the glamorised life portrayed in the South Korean soap operas smuggled into the North.
Kim Song-il is now in his seventh line of business since he defected 14 years ago. He's been a bus driver, a building labourer and has run a restaurant.
Now he's started his own business selling chicken pieces. He buys whole chickens and has hired a handful of employees to cut them up and bag them for freezing to be sold - the price of the parts combined is greater than the cost of the whole.
It's a struggle. "When my earlier businesses failed, I tried to kill myself three times," he says. "I had to keep reminding myself how I risked my life just to get here."
Part of his difficulty, he says, is that he was a military officer in the North and was used to giving orders. Taking orders as an employee in capitalism has not been easy.
Last year, there were 1,400 defectors. The flow is all one way - North to South.
Or nearly all one way. Forty-five-year-old Kim Ryen-hi gave a tearful press conference recently and announced that she wants to go home. Four years ago, she arrived in South Korea via China and Thailand but now misses the North dreadfully.
"Freedom and material and other lures of any kind, they are not as important to me as my family and home," she said. "I want to return to my precious family, even if I die of hunger."
She is very much an exception - and there are those who succeed in the South. Lee Yung-hee has enterprise written right through her. She defected 14 years ago and now runs a busy restaurant - Max Tortilla - two hours outside Seoul.
In the North, she'd never heard of this classic Mexican dish but when she reached the South she initially got a job selling kebabs - meat in a roll - and thought that adding rice would suit Korean taste even more. The result, she discovered, was akin to a burrito, so she went into the burrito business - very successfully. Initiative and hard work paid off.
"When I first arrived here the South seemed so different," she says. "In order to succeed, I had to learn everything from scratch."
Defectors get three months' training when they arrive but critics of the system say that's not enough to learn new skills. The government replies that the defectors themselves don't want prolonged periods of schooling.
Some Christian groups provide vocational training and say that what works best is training in simple but useful skills like making coffee to serve in a cafe.
But the lack of opportunities, beyond humble jobs like this, is one source of discontent.
According to one survey 50% described their status in the North as "upper" or "middle" class, but only 26% said they fell into this category in the South. The vast majority - 73% - described their new status as lower class.
Andrei Lankov, a historian at Kookmin University in Seoul who has also studied in Pyongyang, says the problem is that skills acquired in the North are insufficient for the modern South Korean economy. Doctors who defect, for example, often fail to get jobs in South Korean medicine.
In his opinion, this has implications for unification whenever (and if ever) it happens.
"Can a graduate of a North Korean medical school hope to get a license in post-unification Korea if all his (or, more likely, her) medical knowledge is taken from poorly translated Soviet textbooks that are a few decades old?" he asks in a story for the NK News website.
And would a South Korean company hire a technician "whose job for decades has principally consisted of dogged - and often ingenious - efforts to keep Soviet-era vintage equipment working?"
That is a dilemma for the future. In the present, the hidden problem consists of desperate North Koreans who are lonely and adrift in South Korea, teetering on the edge of taking their own lives, and sometimes tipping over the edge.
Watch Stephen Evans's video, filmed for the Victoria Derbyshire programme.
More from the Magazine
Fifteen years ago, Kim Cheol-woong was a successful pianist living in North Korea - but his life suddenly changed when someone heard him playing a Western love song.
Interrogated for playing the wrong tune (July 2015)
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Next month, the UK will do its most thorough census yet. A century ago, a new expanded form was evidence of a government's thirst for knowledge in their efforts to help a population stricken by poverty, bad nutrition and high infant mortality. | By Finlo RohrerBBC News Magazine
There are many differences between the 1911 and 2011 census.
That of a hundred years ago was able to fit on a single sheet. Today's is likely to be about 30 pages long.
That of 1911 might be regarded as sexist, implying that if there was a husband in the household he would be head of it. And its language on infirmity, asking householders if they were "lunatic, imbecile or feeble-minded", would be unlikely to pass muster with today's disability campaigners.
In 1911, as far as work went, the government just wanted to know occupation, industry, and status. In 2011, the census has 15 nuanced questions on work and employment.
And yet there is a great similarity between the 1911 and 2011 censuses - they both represent expansion in what the authorities want to know about the population.
Censuses have been taken since ancient times, often to calculate taxes, or as an assessment of military strength. In Britain the census started in 1801 and was extended to Ireland 20 years later.
The first censuses in the British Isles were not detailed. Every decade more questions were added, but 1911 represented a sea change.
The government wanted to know more detail about people's work, immigration status, their health and most importantly, their fertility. And it seems for the most part, that people duly obliged.
For the 2011 census, there has already been criticism over the cost and intrusiveness of the questioning. People seem to have overcome these qualms in 1911.
"People were certainly more amenable to these questions in 1911 than in 1841," says historian and broadcaster Nick Barratt.
"There was a lot of government investigation into everyday lives. There wasn't the great hooha you get today about cost and intrusiveness."
That's not to say some people weren't unhappy. The King family of Cheshire seemed to be irked, scrawling in pencil: "Would you like to know what our income is, what each had for breakfast, how long we expect to live and anything else?"
They still filled in the form, including the fact that of 67-year-old Mrs King's 10 children, all had survived. This was crucial information for the government.
"Child mortality had been a hot potato for about 40 years," says Dr Julie-Marie Strange, senior lecturer in Victorian Studies at Manchester University. "From the 1860s there is a real anxiety that people don't value infant life very much and that it is too easy to let infants die."
In the Victorian mindset, immorality was the main suspect. The practice of taking out life insurance on babies was banned, notes Dr Strange, over fears that babies were deliberately being allowed to die.
But by the early 20th Century, infant mortality rates were still stubbornly high.
"General mortality rates went into decline from 1870 - the one exception is infant mortality," says Dr Strange. "The 1911 census allows a thorough statistical understanding. It is allowing mapping of that demographic and death rate.
"You start to get massive resources ploughed into infant and child welfare. The infant mortality rates start to decline. A lot of it is health visitors improving nutrition - milk depots where mothers can go and get free milk."
Of course, some people would have been wary about people coming into their homes asking about child deaths and marital status.
"That's quite a sensitive issue. Even asking people how long they had been married was a bit contentious," says Debra Chatfield, of findmypast.co.uk, which has the 1911 census online.
"They may have had children conceived before they married. There was a bit of a trend for people to live as if they were Mr and Mrs but they hadn't taken the formal step."
Working-class men were the group most wary of snooping intruders, says Dr Strange.
"There would have been a degree of suspicion. You have very well-spoken people coming to your house and trying to found out things about you."
But the strength of the 1911 census was that it was the first to be filled in by householders rather than by enumerators.
This is what makes it such a goldmine for genealogy buffs. Being able to see an ancestor's actual handwriting is often as pleasing as the information garnered, and there are new nuances for the sharp-eyed to spot.
"You have always had phenomena like postcode inflation. If they write their own address you get a sense of that," says Dan Jones, of ancestry.co.uk, who plan to have the 1911 census online soon.
"Even in how people describe themselves you can get a sense of what they are."
The 1911 census also offers an insight into one of the great political movements of 20th Century Britain, the efforts by suffragettes to get the vote for women.
The activists tried to get women to refuse to fill out the census, organising a mass avoidance session near London's Trafalgar Square, prompting a heartfelt plea from the registrar in the Times.
"It furnishes statistics and materials on which are based most of the measures by which the health and happiness of the community are promoted. In the struggle with disease and poverty and the work for the benefit of the children and the helpless the Census statistics are invaluable," he wrote.
Those "helpless" were counted with the help of a Salvation Army free-meal-and-census evening featuring a menu of bread and mutton soup.
And afterwards, the Times was delighted to report that the suffragettes had failed to avoid being counted. It puts the recent international Jedi census stunt - where people listed their religion as Jedi in tribute to Star Wars - into perspective.
Looking at the 2011 census, the irked members of the King family might have been surprised to see questions on type of heating, ethnicity and religion. Or the baffling question 17: "This question is intentionally left blank go to 18."
The observer from 1911 might also wonder at our obsession over the minutiae of working life. Take question 28: "If a job had been available last week, could you have started it within two weeks?"
If the government of 1911 was curious, the government of 2011 is ravenous for knowledge.
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The film Legend, telling the story of the Kray twins, has broken box office records since its release earlier this month. Johnny Depp has played notorious Boston gangster Whitey Bulger. But what is it about gangsters' life stories that continues to fascinate audiences? | By Justin ParkinsonBBC News Magazine
Warning: This piece contains spoilers
"I am not going to waste words on you," said Justice Melford Stevenson as he sentenced Ronnie and Reggie Kray to life imprisonment. "In my view society has earned a rest from your activities."
The judge's disdain at the end of their murder trial in 1969 reflects an official view of gangsters. They hurt and kill for money. They torture rivals. They steal. They sell drugs. They traffic people for sex. They terrorise neighbourhoods.
But, contrary to the judge's wishes, leaders of organised crime need not fear obscurity. Hundreds of films and books have been made and written about their exploits.
The hunger for information shows no sign of letting up with Legend, a Krays biopic starring Tom Hardy as both brothers, taking more than £5m in its opening weekend. This is the biggest figure for a September opening and the biggest for a British production with an 18 certificate.
Black Mass, starring Johnny Depp as the Boston gangster James "Whitey" Bulger, has opened in the US and is out soon in the UK. Classics like the Godfather trilogy, Goodfellas, Angels With Dirty Faces, Scarface (two versions) and the Untouchables continue to fascinate, despite showing violence, intimidation and abuse.
What is it that makes gangsters at once so appalling and appealing?
"There's something immensely aspirational about it - this sense that they can do anything," says David Wilson, professor of criminology at Birmingham City University. "They take risks that we would never take in real life. Often there's a good-looking actor playing the lead. They look cool. They wear clothes that are fashionable."
There's also nostalgia - the Krays' trial and imprisonment came at the end of the 1960s, London's "swinging" decade. They mixed with celebrities, politicians and society figures before their downfall. Most of those involved or affected by the Krays' reign are no longer active or alive, so a sheen of legend attaches itself more easily.
The Krays
Films about criminals have been popular for more than a century. DW Griffith's The Musketeers of Pig Alley, released in 1912, is regarded by many critics as the world's first gangster movie. Without revealing the plot, it's fair to say its main villain doesn't really get his comeuppance.
US academics Robert Bieber and Robert Kelly have written of gangsterism in popular culture in this era as a parallel of the American Dream - the poor managing to establish an exalted position in society and great wealth by illegal means. For those denied opportunities, they become criminal class warriors.
Wilson is sceptical of this idea, though, arguing that an interest in gangsters is less about their origins than their destination in life. "You could get a film about [Metropolitan Police Commissioner] Bernard Hogan-Howe, who came from quite a poor background, but no-one would want to make that. There's something about good guys that doesn't resonate with a cinema-going audience. They won't take the same level of risk or behave outside any moral compass."
The films of the 1910s and 1920s were seen by many to glamorise crime. So the Hays Code, setting out moral guidelines for Hollywood in 1930, stipulated that the "sympathy of the audience should never be thrown to the side of crime, wrongdoing, evil or sin".
Directors used their ingenuity to include some ambiguity while ostensibly following the code. The 1932 film Scarface, at the time seen as highly violent, had the subtitle The Shame of the Nation. With its whiff of excitement, it's debatable whether this discouraged or encouraged people to watch. In 1938's Angels With Dirty Faces, James Cagney goes to the electric chair, although there is no sense of remorse.
Simple morality and gangster films had an uneasy relationship even before the code's demise in the mid-1960s. "Although movie viewers expect criminals to fail which means prison or death," say Bieber and Kelly, "the bad guys are seen somewhat sympathetically as victims of circumstances as much as they are perceived as psychopaths or social misfits."
This theme continues in Michael Corleone, the main character in the Godfather Trilogy, released from 1972 to 1990, pulled into running his Mafia family's operations and becoming gradually more brutal. "I didn't see him as a gangster," Al Pacino, who played Corleone, has said. "I felt his power was his enigmatic quality."
Legend's director, Brian Helgeland, has spoken of the need to humanise Reggie Kray, in contrast to his brother, who was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic in 1979. The film, narrated from the point of view of Reggie's wife Frances, shows his decline after her suicide.
But films struggle against time constraints when showing people's lives, often restricted to their most exciting events.
"You see these people at a distance," says writer and broadcaster Antony Earnshaw. "A lot of audiences don't want to see the truth of what these people did. If you put that on screen, they are repulsed by it. They want to believe in the legend and not the truth. Unless you grew up in 1960s Bethnal Green, how can you ever know what the Krays were like?"
"Extreme acts" of good and evil are what attract people, Earnshaw argues. The Krays were known for generosity towards their friends, while their enemies experienced violence.
There are broadly two types of gangster films - the fictional and those based on real stories. The Krays and Black Mass are both among the latter.
These involve a "fine balance" between entertaining audiences and showing the reality, says Earnshaw. This is particularly so as many people who knew Bulger's victims, and to a lesser extent those of the Krays, will still be around.
The Krays were themselves fans of classic US gangster movies and were said to base some of their mannerisms on those of actors like Cagney, Spencer Tracey and Humphrey Bogart. They seem to inhabit a more glamorous world than most. Money, fast cars, sex: films continue to show a lot of the upside. "There's still a romanticisation of the gangster," says Earnshaw.
Gangsters are often shown as colourful characters, from Robert De Niro's portrayal of Chicago bootlegger Al Capone in The Untouchables to the assortment of East End villains to be found in Guy Ritchie's Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.
There is a sense of honour among many screen gangsters, particularly "omerta" - the mafia's understanding that all members of an organisation maintain silence about its activities, especially when the police are involved.
Whitey Bulger, a prominent figure in Boston's organised crime scene from the 1970s to the mid-1990s, was found guilty in 2013 of 11 murders. He was sentenced two two life terms, plus five years. Ronnie Kray died in 1995 and Reggie Kray in 2000.
Where the ugly reality of gangsters' violence intrudes it can still be shocking, even in the context of a film about them. In Goodfellas, released almost exactly 25 years ago, Joe Pesci's Tommy glasses a restaurateur who asks him to pay the bill. Tommy kills another man, after he mocks his previous career as a shoe-shine boy while standing in the same bar. He punches him repeatedly, while an associate kicks him. Tommy blames the death on "disrespect".
"It's that mentality that frightens me, the way they can act so suddenly in this way," says Earnshaw. "You must never believe that these people are your friends."
More from the Magazine
The Manson case involved drugs, orgies and cults, three concerns shared by parents of children growing up in the "free love" atmosphere of the 1960s. It also came at a time of intense divisions in the US over civil rights, race and the Vietnam War.
What explains the continuing fascination with Charles Manson? (November 2014)
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When a devastating fire destroyed a town's only supermarket, many feared a lifeline had been destroyed. But from the ashes is emerging a renewed community spirit and the determination to come back stronger. | By Laura Devlin and Mariam IssimdarBBC News
The images spread across social media as quickly as the flames engulfed the building.
Budgens, which had served the north Norfolk town of Holt for more than 30 years, was being destroyed by fire. Late into the night on 20 June, crowds gathered to take a closer look as it went up in smoke.
The disbelief and sense of loss were palpable.
The fire left Holt with no supermarket. Its nearest is seven miles (11km) away in Sheringham and not all of the town's 3,926 residents - just under half of whom are 65+ - will be able to get there.
Budgens was also Holt's only post office, the community hub, the workplace of neighbours and friends - it seemed everyone knew someone who worked there.
At dawn, while firefighters picked over the charred skeleton of an old friend, the community's own emergency response was already under way.
Within hours, an online appeal for staff "who worked so hard to provide a lifeline to our town during coronavirus" had raised hundreds of pounds and now the total stands at more than £7,000.
"Thank you for being there," one of the comments reads, praising Budgens for its deliveries during lockdown.
"The staff were absolutely incredible," says another. "We are thinking of you."
Duncan Baker, who grew up in the town and is now Conservative MP for North Norfolk, said: "There's been a huge outpouring of people being very upset. How many towns would see that over a supermarket?
"Budgens wasn't just a supermarket: it was independent, it did an amazing amount of activities, raising thousands of pounds for local charities.
"They would stock huge amounts of local produce that you just wouldn't get in normal supermarkets: daffodils from local growers at Easter, crabs from Cromer fishermen, strawberries from fields just down the road.
"All the people I have spoken to are very supportive - they're very, very sad to see the fire because of how much Budgens meant to them, but I believe Holt will come out of this even stronger."
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Budgens has more than 260 stores, all locally owned by independent retailers, and Holt's is owned by CT Baker - which for years had Mr Baker's late stepfather, Michael, as its managing director.
Customers were as likely to buy a raffle ticket or stumble across a charity bake sale as they were to pick up groceries.
For Bridget Jarvis, who worked at Budgens for 10 years before her retirement, the store's loss was "horrendous".
"I shopped in there every day; it was really handy," she said.
"We've got nowhere now - it's really bad on the elderly and those that can't drive.
"They rely on Budgens. They're lost, really."
Throughout lockdown, Budgens delivered to vulnerable customers but had to raise its game when the store went up in smoke.
Over the next four days, more than a fifth of calls to North Norfolk District Council's coronavirus helpline were from customers anxious about food supplies.
The council and volunteers ensured the most vulnerable had enough supplies, and this week Budgens restarted deliveries from its store in Aylsham, 11 miles (18km) away.
A shuttle-bus service to a supermarket was mooted, but coronavirus fears around shared transport meant it was not taken up.
Jane Gurney-Read, managing director of CT Baker, said: "We have some very vulnerable customers in Holt, some who cannot get out or are shielding.
"We were able to do our usual deliveries within a week, and people have had the same delivery driver, Mike, who they are used to seeing."
Within five days, the town's only post office reappeared as a "pop-up" within Bakers and Larners, a department store on the High Street owned by the company.
"The last thing we wanted to do was leave the customers stranded and that has been very well received," said Ms Gurney-Read.
She said Budgens' 83 staff members would be paid throughout the summer, with hopes that a new supermarket will be up and running as soon as possible.
"They worked very hard during Covid-19 to keep the community looked after.
"When we spoke to them, a lot of them, their first thought was not for themselves, it was for the customers - that just tells you the kind of team we have."
"None of us want Holt to be without a supermarket. Once we have plans in place, they will be shared."
The essential shops on Holt's High Street and among its higgledy-piggledy streets and courtyards, including butchers and greengrocers, have pulled together to try to bridge the gap left behind by Budgens.
Joanne Boulter, of B&J Seafoods, which has offered deliveries throughout lockdown, said: "The trade has picked up - we've tried to stock a bit of fruit and veg, bread and rolls, to help customers.
"We're just helping where we can. Everyone misses it. We didn't see it as a competition - everyone went in there for something."
It's easy to view Holt, with its handsome Georgian buildings, as a well-heeled town. It is awash with galleries, posh delis and gift shops and is popular with second-homers and holidaymakers.
Bakers and Larners has been compared to Fortnum and Mason, and boarding school Gresham's will soon have a new science block, thanks to £18.75m from alumnus Sir James Dyson.
But behind the boutiques and antiques, and just yards from Gresham's playing field, is a different town - the one supported by Julie Alford, who runs Holt Youth Project.
It hosts a food bank and supports young people, including carers, many of whom are still at primary school.
"The need has been overwhelming this week - so many people needed us," she said, from its centre within an area of social housing.
Up to 30 food parcels have been delivered to families and young carers who are struggling to get to a supermarket, or are unable to find a delivery slot.
Mental health problems, low aspirations and domestic abuse are among the issues she deals with.
"For some, it's like Budgens has burned down and their life has fallen apart," she said.
Lucy Worrell was making a special trip from a neighbouring village to support the local shops in Holt.
"We've just had this extraordinary period of lockdown and then for this to happen, it couldn't get any worse," she said.
"I really hope it will come back."
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If you have a job, then you pay National Insurance. | It is taken out of your salary depending on how much you earn, similar to income tax.
But because it isn't called a tax, governments can say they haven't increased income tax even though they've put up National Insurance.
Labour is planning to increase how much both employers and employees pay.
The Conservatives claim that will damage business and say they will scrap the rise.
So what is National Insurance and how does it work?
History
National Insurance payments were introduced in 1911.
The idea was to provide a government safety-net for workers who fell on hard times.
Employees paid money into the scheme out of their wages.
Anyone needing cash for medical treatment, or because they had lost their job, could claim from the fund.
What it is used for?
The system has changed over the years.
National Insurance is now used to pay for:
NI is supposed to be "ring fenced" - meaning the money raised is only used for these areas and won't be spent on things like building schools or employing police officers.
However, the government can borrow from the National Insurance fund to help pay for other projects.
How much do I pay?
If you work for a company:
On any money you earn between £110 and £844 per week - you pay 11%
If you earn more than £844 per week, there's an extra 1% added on top.
If you are self-employed:
A flat rate of £2.40 per week,
plus 8% of your profits between £5,715 and £43,875 per year.
If you are an employer:
You also pay into the scheme - 12.8% of an employee's salary.
Why are politicians arguing about NI?
Labour plans to increase National Insurance contributions by 1% for employees and employers. They claim that is needed to pay for public services during the recession.
The Conservatives say that will damage the economy and have the support of several high profile business leaders.
Instead they want to find extra cash from cutting "wasteful" spending.
The Liberal Democrats are also sceptical about the Conservative plan to freeze NI.
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The escape on Saturday of Joaquin Guzman, one of the world's most wanted drug lords, from a maximum-security jail in Mexico, has reignited the discussion about whether he should have been extradited to the United States. | By Vanessa BuschschluterBBC News
US prosecutors had been expressing their wish to put him on trial in a US court since his arrest in February 2014.
Guzman, who was named Public Enemy Number One by the Chicago Crime Commission in 2013, has been indicted by at least seven federal district courts.
As the head of the Sinaloa cartel, he is accused of overseeing the smuggling of huge amounts of drugs from South and Central America to the United States.
He is also facing charges of money laundering, racketeering and arms trafficking in courts as far apart as Arizona and Texas.
'No intention'
But since his 2014 arrest in his home state of Sinaloa, Mexico, there has been little movement on the extradition front.
While US courts were arguing about who had the best case against Guzman and should therefore get priority putting him on trial, Mexican officials were making it clear they were in no rush to send him across the border.
Mexico's attorney general at the time, Jesus Murillo Karam, said as early as April last year that he had "no intention" of handing Guzman over to the US authorities.
In an interview with Mexican daily El Universal, Mr Murillo Karam said he was annoyed at a plea bargain an extradited Mexican drug dealer had struck with the US authorities.
Jesus Vicente Zambada Niebla, also known as Vicentillo, pleaded guilty in a court in Chicago to smuggling tonnes of cocaine and heroin to the United States.
In exchange for promising the US authorities "full and truthful co-operation", his sentence was reduced from a potential life sentence to 10 years.
Valuable asset
The US authorities believed Vicentillo could prove a key witness if Joaquin Guzman was ever extradited to the United States.
The son of Guzman's number two, Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada, and a key player in the drugs trade himself, Vicentillo was seen as a valuable asset.
But Mr Murillo Karam said he felt "uncomfortable" with the deals the US reached with "criminals" such as Vicentillo.
The then-attorney general pointed out that there were plenty of charges Guzman faced in Mexico as well as in the US and that he wanted to see him tried in his homeland.
He reiterated his position in January of this year, when he again stated that he wanted to see Guzman serve his sentence in Mexico first.
'El Chapo [Guzman] has to stay here to serve his sentence and then I'll extradite him. That could be in about 300 to 400 years, there's still a long time to go."
At the time, he said that he thought a formal extradition request by the US was imminent, but it seems that following Mr Murillo Karam's strong words, the request was not filed.
He argued that keeping Guzman in Mexico was also a question of sovereignty.
But Mr Murillo Karam is more likely to regret another statement he made back in January.
He said that extradition should be considered in instances where there was a flight risk, something he said did "not exist" in the case of Guzman.
Given the fact the Guzman had escaped from another top security jail in 2001 and was on the run for the next 13 years, this was a surprising assurance.
Colombian experience
Comparisons have been drawn between Joaquin Guzman and the late infamous Colombian drug lord, Pablo Escobar.
Both made immense fortunes in the illicit drug trafficking trade, and through bribery and intimidation managed to sway huge power and infiltrate parts of the security forces.
Both have also mounted successful and spectacular escapes from jail.
It was Pablo Escobar's jail break that played a major part in changing the Colombian approach to extradition.
In a 1991 deal with the Colombian authorities, Escobar agreed to hand himself in to the Colombian police and to serve five years in a jail built to his own specifications in his hometown of Medellin.
La Catedral (the cathedral), as the luxury jail was known, boasted a football pitch, a jacuzzi and a bar among its many amenities.
After little more than a year, Escobar escaped from the jail and went on the run, much like Guzman did on Saturday.
He was eventually killed a year later while still on the run.
But before he was jailed, Escobar had threatened and cajoled members of a constitutional assembly to enshrine a ban on extraditions in the Colombian constitution.
It remained in force until December 1997, when a constitutional amendment reversed the ban.
Since then, Colombia has extradited many drug dealers to the United States saying that it is both a cheaper and safer option for the Colombian justice system.
Colombian officials argue that in the US, Colombian drug dealers will find it harder to intimidate guards and their families or to access their riches to bribe prison staff.
With 30 prison staff and the warden under questioning over the escape of Chapo Guzman at Mexico's Altiplano jail, this argument may well be met with more open ears in Mexico, too, now.
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In 1981 Alex Wheatle served time in prison in London following the Brixton riots. His teenage life was turned around by another prisoner who suggested he should start reading the work of black writers - it was the creative spark for his own career as a novelist. | By Vincent DowdArts correspondent, BBC News
The reading-list included Chester Himes - the "amazingly exciting" American crime writer Wheatle says should be better known.
The moment Wheatle fell in love with black writing is dramatised in a film from Steve McQueen's Small Axe season on BBC One, which airs on Sunday.
Cellmate Simeon tells Wheatle he needs to know more about black culture - British and otherwise. We see Wheatle (played by Sheyi Cole) pick up the history book The Black Jacobins.
But Wheatle, now an author with 15 books to his credit, says the fiction novels which gripped him most in jail were those of Chester Himes.
Himes was born into a middle-class family in Missouri in 1909. He died in 1984 - not long after Wheatle discovered his dynamic, hard-driven crime stories such as A Rage in Harlem and The Real Cool Killers.
Wheatle says he enjoyed non-fiction by the likes of CLR James "but when I asked my cellmate for novels to relate to my life as a young black guy in early '80s London he said there wasn't much and I should read Chester Himes".
"I found his books amazingly exciting - the stories set in Harlem featuring the New York detectives Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones.
"But what really piqued my interest was when I realised Himes had been in prison too - in his case for years. It's where his writing career began and now I see a parallel."
Pim Higginson, who wrote The Noir Atlantic, about Himes and his influence on other writers, says Himes has always been read by small group in the US
"But he became a literary star in Europe because in his 40s he moved to France and later to Spain. Even now I think the majority of his readers are in France," says Higginson.
"He was a hugely irascible man and a chronic alcoholic. He could be very difficult with publishers. But it's all part of what makes him interesting."
Higginson says even as a teenager Himes' life had clearly been going wrong. "The people he hung around with were prostitutes and pool-sharks and gamblers and various underworld types. Then in 1928 he was sentenced to a minimum of 20 years for violent armed robbery."
It was from the Ohio State Penitentiary that Himes began to submit stories to magazines. He built a reputation writing in grim surroundings and was paroled in 1936.
The first published novel, If He Hollers Let Him Go, came nine years later. It's an unstinting account of the racism the central character faces in wartime Los Angeles.
Higginson says it's the non-crime novel by Himes which today's readers are most likely to encounter. "Post-war it won Chester an audience in America, even if the follow-ups did less well. But in 1953 everything changed totally because he left America for good."
Higginson says the author's reasons for going to live in Europe were involved. "Himes had a complex relationship with his own racial identity.
"His father had been very dark-skinned and his mother very light-skinned. He wasn't one of the African American authors who expected that going to live in Paris would mean a total escape from racist attitudes at home.
"But Chester wanted to reinvent himself as a writer and he did exactly that."
The New York setting used in Himes' crime stories - which delighted Wheatle with its vigour and wit - emerged in books published in France and later in Spain.
Starting in 1945 the Série noire paperbacks brought out hard-boiled American crime fiction in French translation. The publisher told Himes he could profitably turn his hand to stories which contained violent murder, an American locale and strongly drawn characters.
Himes wrote in English but the pages were translated almost as they left his typewriter. French readers loved the stories.
Wheatle says as a young man he too gobbled up the stories of detectives Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones. The next car chase or shoot-out or grisly death is seldom far away.
"I think what I found most distinctive was the picture of Harlem life. It was so vivid I could almost smell the streets and the characters on the streets. I'd never read anyone who wrote in that raw way.
"It was the closest thing I'd ever read to what was going on in those days in Brixton. He was writing about New York but I could see parallels with the relationships between people on the street and with the police.
"Sometimes the police in South London would treat people brutally and you get that in Chester Himes too. I had to flinch at the rawness and violence in his books and what people did to each other."
He says reading Himes made him more confident about presenting narratives he knew. "I saw he'd done something like it already in a US context and he made me see that those stories of black life were valid.
"The characters I was writing about deserved their place in fiction and without Chester Himes I'm not sure I would ever have done it.
"He started writing his crime novels more than 60 years ago. But the issues he addresses are alive today. Chester Himes writes about unemployment and what people might do to get out of the poverty trap.
"Crime and desperation are still with us and that's what's underneath in his stories even if they're fun to read."
Himes wrote eight Harlem novels plus one left unfinished. Coffin Ed and Grave Digger and the other characters are so memorable it's surprising there have been no recent screen versions.
The films Cotton Comes to Harlem and Come Back Charleston Blue are now almost 50 years old. A Rage in Harlem, starring Forest Whitaker and Danny Glover, came out in 1991. Maybe it's time TV and movie producers looked again at the works of Chester Himes.
A BBC World Service Witness History programme to accompany this piece is available to listen now.
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Have you ever wondered what life is like on an oil rig in the North Sea?
| In his immersive video, one worker takes you around the Shearwater platform.
You control the camera - look up, down, and around, and experience life aboard an oil rig.
Shell is celebrating its 50th anniversary of operating in the North Sea.
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A 19-year-old man has been charged with murder after a woman's body was discovered at a house in Liverpool. | Police found the body of N'Taya Elliott-Cleverley, 20, at the home in Prince Alfred Road, Wavertree on Friday.
A post-mortem is to be carried out to establish her cause of death.
Mohammed Diakite, from Wavertree, has been held in custody and is due to appear at Liverpool Magistrates' Court on Monday.
Why not follow BBC North West on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram? You can also send story ideas to [email protected]
Related Internet Links
Merseyside Police
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Google has unveiled plans for its own domain name registration service. | The firm is "testing" a service that will allow consumers "to search, find, purchase and transfer" domain names for their business.
An increasing number of businesses are looking to set up their online presence, boosting demand for domain names.
Google's move comes just as GoDaddy filed papers to raise $100m (£59m) via a share sale.
GoDaddy is one of the world's biggest domain name registration firms.
"This puts them in direct competition with GoDaddy," said Keith Timimi, chairman of VML Qais, a digital marketing service agency.
According to its filing with the US authorities, GoDaddy had 57 million domains under management at the end of last year and generated revenues of $1.1bn.
Up sell?
Google is also one of world's most popular online search engines.
Mr Timimi said there have "always been rumours within the industry that Google was a domain name registrar". However, he said that Google had mostly used that service internally "to fight web spam and to help provide cleaner search results".
"Now it is leveraging that ability to offer this as a commercial service."
Google said it has tied up with four firms that specialise in building websites - Squarespace, Wix, Weebly, and Shopify - to help businesses create one of their own.
The firm said it was also working at providing "hosting services from a range of providers, as well as domain management support" to customers.
Mr Timimi explained that Google's latest venture could also help it better market its other services such as AdWords to businesses keen on boosting their online presence.
"The logic is pretty obvious - they can up sell their existing services," said Mr Timimi.
But he cautioned: "With their dominance in search, this may get some to worry if Google would use that data to help promote their services more than others".
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Gabon's opposition says it was cheated of victory, after official results showed a turnout of 99.93% in President Ali Bongo's home region, with 95% of votes in his favour. Elizabeth Blunt has witnessed many elections across Africa, as both a BBC journalist and election observer and looks at six signs of possible election rigging. | Too many voters
Watch the turnout figures ‒ they can be a big giveaway.
You never get a 98% or 99% turnout in an honest election. You just don't.
Voting is compulsory in Gabon, but it is not enforced; even in Australia where it is enforced, where you can vote by post or online and can be fined for not voting, turnout only reaches 90-95%.
The main reason that a full turnout is practically impossible is that electoral registers, even if they are recently compiled, can rarely be 100% up-to-date.
Even if no-one gets sick or has to travel, people still die. And when a register is updated, new voters are keen to add themselves to the list.
No-one, however, has any great enthusiasm for removing the names of those who have died, and over time the number of these non-existent voters increases.
I once reported on an election in the Niger Delta where some areas had a turnout of more than 120%.
"They're very healthy people round here, and very civic-minded," a local official assured me.
But a turnout of more than 100%, in an area or an individual polling station, is a major red flag and a reason to cancel the result and re-run the election.
A high turnout in specific areas
Even where the turnout is within the bounds of possibility, if the figure is wildly different from the turnout elsewhere, it serves as a warning.
Why would one particular area, or one individual polling station, have a 90% turnout, while most other areas register less than 70%?
Something strange is almost certainly going on, especially if the high turnout is an area which favours one particular candidate or party over another.
Large numbers of invalid votes
There are other, more subtle ways that riggers can increase votes ‒ or reduce them.
Keep an eye on the number of votes excluded as invalid. Even in countries with low literacy rates this isn't normally above 5%.
High numbers of invalid votes can mean that officials are disqualifying ballots for the slightest imperfection, even when the voter's intention is perfectly clear, in an attempt to depress votes for their opponents.
More votes than ballot papers issued
When the polls close, and before they open the boxes, election officials normally have to go through a complicated and rather tedious process known as the reconciliation of ballots.
After they have counted how many ballot papers they received in the morning, they then need to count how many are left, and how many ‒ if any ‒ were torn or otherwise spoiled and had to be put aside.
The result will tell them how many papers should be in the box. It should also match the number of names checked off on the register.
The first task when the box is opened is to count the number of papers inside, this is done prior to counting the votes for the different candidates.
If there is a discrepancy, something is wrong. And if there are more papers in the boxes than were issued by the polling staff, it is highly likely that someone has been doing some "stuffing".
That's a good enough reason to cancel the result and arrange a re-run.
Results that don't match
Mobile phones have made elections much more transparent.
It is now standard practice to allow party agents, observers and sometimes even voters to watch the counting process and take photographs of the results sheet with their phones.
They then have proof of the genuine results from their area ‒ just in case the ones announced later by the electoral commission don't match.
It has clearly taken crooked politicians some time to catch up with the fact that people will now know if they change the results.
In south-eastern Togo, local party representatives told me that they witnessed the count in 2005 and endorsed the result; they saw the official in charge leave for the capital, taking the signed results sheet with him. Yet the results announced later on the radio were different.
The same thing happened in Katanga Province of the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2011. The results announced on the radio were not the same as those international observers saw posted outside the polling stations.
But this transparency only works if the official announcement of results includes figures for individual counting centres ‒ and this has become an issue in the current Gabonese election.
Delay in announcing results
Finally something that is not necessarily a sign of rigging, but it is often assumed to be so.
Election commissions, particularly in Africa, can appear to take an inordinately long time to publish official results.
This is not helped by local observer networks and political parties who, tallying up the results sent in by their agents on mobile phones, have a good idea of the result long before the more cumbersome official process is completed.
But the official process takes time, especially in countries with poor communications, and the introduction of modern electronic transmission systems has not necessarily helped.
Where these systems have proved too demanding for the context, as in Malawi last year, they can actually increase delays as staff struggle to make the technology work.
In that particular case the results eventually had to be transmitted the old fashioned way; placed in envelopes and driven down to the capital under police escort.
By then, allegations of rigging were flying.
Delay is certainly dangerous, fuelling rumours of results being "massaged" before release and increasing tensions, but this is not incontrovertible proof of rigging.
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Two members of the public have rescued an injured jet skier from the sea off Bridgend county.
| They swam out from the shore at Coney Beach at about 20:20 BST on Friday after the man was thrown from the water bike.
The man, who suffered a leg injury, was checked by paramedics but did not need hospital treatment.
Milford Haven Coastguard said both Porthcawl RNLI lifeboats were launched.
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A man has been arrested after a school in Brighton went into lockdown following reports of a person with a machete in nearby woodland. | Officers arrested a 24-year-old man in the city earlier and he remained in custody, Sussex Police said.
Pupils at Brighton Aldridge Community Academy were kept inside on Thursday while officers, assisted by a helicopter, searched the area.
Pupils were later escorted by officers to return home safely from school.
No-one was threatened or harmed in the incident, police said.
The school, which takes children aged 11 to 18, has not commented.
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A man and a dog have been rescued after getting cut off by the tide at Rhyl. | Rhyl RNLI inshore lifeboat was launched and coastguard rescue teams from Rhyl and Flint were also called out on Saturday.
The man was brought safely to shore and his dog was later plucked from the sea.
Holyhead Coastguard said it was alerted by a 999 call at 08:50 GMT.
Related Internet Links
Geograph: Rhyl Promenade
RNLI: Rhyl Lifeboat Station
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A man has been arrested after a concealed camera was discovered in the women's toilets at the studios where the next James Bond film is being shot. | Police said they were investigating a report of voyeurism after the device was found at Pinewood Studios.
Filming is under way for the 25th edition of the British spy franchise, starring Daniel Craig.
Thames Valley Police said a 49-year-old had been arrested over the incident and remains in police custody.
A spokeswoman for Pinewood Studios said: "We take this issue very seriously. We have reported the incident to the police and are supporting them with their investigation."
The device was discovered earlier this week, said police.
On Thursday the Prince of Wales visited the site at Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire, and met Bond stars Craig and Ralph Fiennes, as well as director Cary Fukunaga.
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Isle of Man motorists are being warned of a growing number of potholes which have emerged on the roads after recent severe weather.
| The government said heavy rain had caused problems in some areas and asked that drivers send pothole reports to the department of infrastructure.
A spokesman said photographs could be especially useful for helping to prioritise the work needed.
He added: "As with any problem, the more information the better."
More information about how to report any problems is available
online
.
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