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Dozens of defendants went on trial at the Brazilian Supreme Court on 2 August 2012 in what was billed as one of the biggest political corruption scandals in the country's recent history. | The judges considered allegations that, between 2003 and 2005, politicians and officials diverted public funds to buy political support for the government of the then President, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. The scheme became known as "mensalao" or the "big monthly" allowance.
Some 25 defendants were convicted, among them former senior members of the governing Workers Party (PT). The first arrests happened nearly a year later, between 15 and 16 November 2013.
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The threat to Indonesia from militant groups is likely to remain active and high for the forseeable future, though recent attacks by supporters of the so-called Islamic State (IS) group show that their capacity for violence remains limited for now. | Four of the eight casualties in the Jakarta terror attack in January were the attackers themselves, and a suicide bomber in Surakarta on 5 July succeeded only in killing himself and injuring one police officer. This is quite a contrast with more devastating previous incidents, the worst of which were the Bali bombings in 2002, which killed more than 200 people.
Support at home and abroad
But regional authorities and terror experts believe IS has galvanised militancy in Indonesia again after a largely successful crackdown on terror networks there in recent years.
Between 300 and 700 Indonesians are believed to have joined the group in Syria and Iraq over the past two years. In Hasakah province, Syria, they have combined with fighters from Malaysia to form their own unit, Majmu'ah al-Arkhabiliy, also known as Katibah Nusantara Daulah Islamiyah.
IS has also stepped up its propaganda efforts targeting the South-East Asian region in recent months. Indonesians have appeared in two of its latest videos, threatening governments and police, and urging supporters to carry out attacks where they are if they cannot travel to the Middle East.
Up to 30 Indonesian groups have pledged allegiance to IS and some have voiced ambitions to establish an official IS province in South-East Asia. While many top militant leaders have been either killed or captured, IS-inspired cells exist and are a continuing threat, influenced by leaders both at home and abroad.
The Jakarta attackers are believed to have been directed by Indonesians based with IS in the Middle East, particularly one Bahrun Naim, as well as jailed local cleric Aman Abdurrahman, who is believed to lead a group called Jamaah Anshar Khilafah (JAK) from prison. The man who carried out the Surakarta bombing, Nur Rohman, is also believed to be a JAK member and to have links to Naim.
Competition may drive attacks
The Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict (IPAC) issued a report earlier this year saying that competition between the leaders of local groups and Katibah Nusantara is likely to lead to further attacks.
In addition, al-Qaeda is likely to have a continuing interest in Indonesia as well. The Jakarta attacks were claimed by IS but also preceded by a message from al-Qaeda specifically targeting Indonesians.
Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), the al-Qaeda-inspired group responsible for previous attacks has largely splintered, and its jailed leader Abu Bakar Bashir rowed back on a previous pledge of allegiance to IS. But it is believed to have been actively recruiting again. Membership is thought to be back up to about 2,000 - the level it was at before the Bali bombings - according to IPAC's director, Sidney Jones.
Reforms required
The authorities have imprisoned some 800 militants and killed more than 100 since the Bali bombings. But it has not had a great amount of success reforming them. Hundreds of militants - some with significant battlefield experience - are due to be released from prison in the coming years, and they may bolster the current ranks of jihadists.
Taufik Andrie, the executive director of Yayasan Prasasti Perdamaian, an institute that helps paroled militants, estimates that some 40% of 400 militants released as of December, for example, have returned to their radical network.
Security analysts have also questioned the authorities' ability to curb the influence of jailed jihadist leaders and the support that mosques and Islamic schools might provide to militants.
Indonesia is also attempting to tighten its anti-terrorism laws: to more clearly define terrorism and make it illegal to join militant groups like IS, enable police to detain people who support terrorist groups, and to enable them to hold terror suspects for longer periods - all issues that police say are hampering their jobs at the moment.
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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The internet slang term "LOL" (laughing out loud) has been added to the Oxford English Dictionary, to the mild dismay of language purists. But where did the term originate? And is it really a threat to our lexicon? | By James MorganBBC News
"OMG! LOL's in the OED. LMAO!"
If you find the above string of letters utterly unintelligible, you are clearly an internet "noob". Let me start again.
Golly gosh! The popular initialism LOL (laughing out loud) has been inducted into the canon of the English language, the Oxford English Dictionary. Blimey! What is going on?
The OED defines LOL as an interjection "used chiefly in electronic communications... to draw attention to a joke or humorous statement, or to express amusement".
It is both "LOL" where all the letters are pronounced separately, but also commonly "lol" where it is pronounced as a word.
The phrase was ushered in alongside OMG (Oh My God), with dictionary guardians pointing to their growing occurrence "in e-mails, texts, social networking... and even in spoken use".
As well as school playgrounds, words like "lolz" and "lolling" can be heard in pubs and offices - though often sarcastically, or in parody.
Love it or loathe it, "lol" is now a legitimate word in our lexicon, says Graeme Diamond, the OED's principal editor for new words.
"The word is common, widespread, and people understand it," he explains.
The word serves a real purpose - it conveys tone in text, something that even the most cynical critics accept.
"I don't 'LOL'. I'm basically someone who kind of hates it," says Rob Manuel of the internet humour site b3ta.
"But the truth is, we do need emotional signifiers in tweets and emails, just as conversation has laughter. 'LOL' might make me look like a twit, but at least you know when I'm being arch."
Death of the dictionary
But for young internet entrepreneurs like Ben Huh, of the Cheezburger Network of comedy sites, "LOL" is much more than a necessary evil. It's both a tool and a toy.
"'LOL' is a part of everyday life. I use it all the time in e-mail exchanges. It's a polite way of acknowledging someone," he says.
"And yes, I do say 'LOL' out loud. In almost an ironic sense, like a slow handclap after a bad joke. 'Lol' means 'yes, I understand that was funny, but I'm not really laughing'."
But no matter how much irony we cake it in, the L-word grinds the ears of many people over the age of 25.
"The death of the dictionary" is how one blogger greeted its induction to the bastion of English.
While on Facebook, there are at least half a dozen "anti-LOL" groups, where lol-ophobes dream of loll-ageddon:
"If something is funny, 'ha', 'hehehehe', or 'hee hee' is perfectly fine depending on the joke, and more descriptive than 'lol'," writes one hater.
Another complains that lol "doesn't sound anything like laughter. In fact you physically CAN'T say it while smiling. I'm all for bastardisation of the language, but with lol, that thing you thought was rubbish really is rubbish".
Wags point out that "LOL" is almost always disingenuous. "How many people are actually laughing out loud when they say LOL?" asks David Crystal, author of Language and the Internet.
But those laughing least of all are the language purists, who lament "LOL" as a hallmark of creeping illiteracy.
"There is a worrying trend of adults mimicking teen-speak," says Marie Clair of the Plain English Campaign, in the Daily Mail.
"They [adults] are using slang words and ignoring grammar. Their language is deteriorating."
But is "LOL" really a lazy, childish concoction?
When the OED traced the origins of the acronym, they discovered 1980s computer fanatics were responsible.
The oldest written records of "LOL" (used to mean laughing out loud) are in the archives of Usenet, an early internet discussion forum.
And the original use was typed by Wayne Pearson, in Calgary, who says he wrote the first ever LOL in reply to a gag by someone called "Sprout".
"LOL" was "geek-speak that filtered through to the mainstream", says Manuel.
"I first saw it in the 1990s - at the end of emails. Then it got picked up by the young kids. Then it went naff. But it came back ironically - with people saying things like 'megalolz'."
Grandparents, for example, often adopt "LOL" as one of their first "internet words", says Huh. "'LOL' and 'OMG' are like momma and dada."
But many mistake "LOL" for "lots of love", leading to some unintended "LOLs", such as the infamous tale of the mother who wrote: "Your grandmother has just passed away. LOL."
It has also lent its name to some wildly popular internet crazes, like Lolcats, whose appeal spread far beyond the realms of cyber-geeks.
More than funny
So why has "LOL", above all other web phrases, become such a phenomenon?
Because it's simple and multipurpose, says Tim Hwang, founder of ROFLCon, a whole festival dedicated to "internet awesome".
"The magic of LOL is that it's both exclusive and inclusive," he says. "On one level, it's simple to understand.
"But it also conveys something subtle - depending on the situation. It means more than just 'funny'. For example, if I had my bike stolen, my friend might reply 'LOL'. It helps overcome an awkward moment."
For school kids, acronyms like "LOL" and "KMT" (kiss my teeth) are a kind of secret code, a badge of belonging, says Tony Thorne, author of the Dictionary of Contemporary Slang.
"I go into schools and record slang words - all the new terms kids are saying - words like 'lolcano'. And if you talk to kids they will say this is our language - this is what identifies us."
But aren't these slang words also harmful to children's vocabulary? Not at all, says Thorne.
"Government educationalists get all worked up about words like LOL - they see them as substandard and unorthodox.
"But the small amount of research on this issue shows that kids who use slang abbreviations are the more articulate ones. It's called code switching."
If we have a literacy crisis, it's among adults as well as children, says Thorne. And slang is not the culprit. In fact, it is enriching the language.
Diamond agrees: "There will always be a minority who want the English language to remain as a frozen beast, that doesn't admit changes," he says.
"But language is a vibrant, evolving animal."
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Dozens of stacks of pebbles have been built on a beach by people doing their daily exercise during the coronavirus lockdown. | Press Association photographer Owen Humphreys has been taking pictures as the towers on the beach at Whitley Bay in North Tyneside have been added to.
"While people are taking their daily lockdown exercise, they have kept adding pebble sculptures transforming the beach," he said.
All pictures are subject to copyright.
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About 75km (47 miles) northeast of Mumbai, along India's first access-controlled expressway, there is a slightly grubby food court that offers a Mexican dosa, a Russian-salad dosa and a Schezwan dosa. | By Samar Halarnkar Bangalore
Packed with families from a middle class that has, roughly after the turn of the century, fallen in love with the automobile and the open road, the expressway food plaza hints at the restless energy of emerging India - a constant search for new destinations and experiences.
The dosa, a popular rice pancake, usually crispy brown on one side, white on the other, is itself a traveller.
This is the fourth article in a BBC series India on a plate, on the diversity and vibrancy of Indian food. Other stories in the series:
The story of the samosa
Cooking the world's oldest-known curry
Why India is a nation of foodies
It originated in south India but with growing internal migration, is now known nationwide.
India's great restlessness has forced the birth of hundreds of dosa varieties, more than this article can record.
The Schezwan saga
Of these, few dosas signify the modern middle-class Indian's food choices and the national proclivity to marry culinary cultures - although the Chinese, if they knew, might instantly request a divorce - than the "Schezwan dosa".
Relations between the world's two most populous countries are scrappy at the best of times, and the most generous way to describe Indian-Chinese relations would be suspicious incomprehension.
Yet, the ubiquitous presence of the Schezwan dosa across India reveals an aspect of Chinese culture that Indians have enthusiastically adopted, albeit in a form no self-respecting Chinese would recognise, such as the word "Schezwan".
"Schezwan" is a corruption of "Sichuan", a Chinese province that lends its name to a style of cooking known for the use of hot peppers - or chillies, as we call them.
Indians take enthusiastically to any cuisine that uses chillies, and in our restless search for new flavours - especially after a tide of growth, sparked by economic reforms in the 1990s - a home-grown, bright-orange "Schezwan (also spelt Shezuan)" sauce seeped rapidly into not just Indian street food but posh restaurants and home kitchens.
No one really knows how Schezwan sauce and the dosa met, but of that meeting there are myriad manifestations, such as the Schezwan butter dosa, the Schezwan masala dosa, and the Schezwan noodle dosa.
In the expanding universe of the Schezwan dosa, nothing is as bizarre - and popular - as the Schezwan chopsuey dosa.
It incorporates all the ingredients I mentioned and then some: a dosa stuffed with butter, spicy vegetables and noodles, tossed in a sweet-sharp Schezuan sauce.
"Take the typical potato stuffing out of the masala dosa and replace it with a tongue-tickling Schezuan chopsuey," writes food diva for the middle-class, Tarla Dalal, on her website, "and there you have a unique snack that is both filling and tasty. With noodles and colourful veggies, this dosa's stuffing is quite sumptuous (sic) too."
Items from an Indian-Chinese menu
As you travel across India, you will also find (on the western, or Konkan, coast) Konkan-Chinese with a preponderance of coconut; Telugu-Chinese which is laced with super-spicy chillies from the southeast; and paneer (or cottage-cheese) heavy Sino-Ludhianvi.
Food writer Vir Sanghi says that no one from China would recognise any of these culinary digressions as Chinese, but he offers this justification: "No Indian would eat the so-called Balti rubbish that British call Indian food in the Midlands."
Spice imperative
Chinese cuisine - or, a vague idea of it - may top the food-fusion list of Indians, but as incomes, enthusiasm and the desire to experiment grow, no national culinary tradition that is strong on spice is safe.
In a country where those who suspect even a hint of blandness in food call for raw green chillies as compensation - hard as it might be to conceive today, Indians never knew of the chilly until the Portuguese ferried it over during the 16th Century - cuisines that use strong spices are favoured but not necessarily.
So, Indians are latching on to Thai, Mexican, Indonesian, Malay and Italian food, the last being a particularly good example of how cuisines that appear inherently alien are forcibly subsumed.
Multinational food chains know better than to ignore the spice imperative.
So McDonald's has a best-selling, spiced vegetarian Mac Aloo Tikki (potato patty) burger, Pizza Hut offers a "curry crust" flavoured with coriander, cardamom and fenugreek and Dominos has a "southern chilly chicken" topping.
Newer, wilder interpretations of foreign fusions include spiced chicken tikkas wrapped in tortillas (with tandoori salad and garlic aioli), samosas - savoury puffs - stuffed with pizza, and Punjabi butter chicken gravy stuffed into a bao, a Chinese steamed bun.
The extent of experimentation appears to - anecdotally - correlate with disposable income.
The rich may enjoy those fancy tortillas and baos, but the middle-classes are still content with the wonders of the Schezwan dosa.
The poor may appear to have few choices, but street carts with cheap "gobhi (cauliflower) manchurian" proliferate in the dustiest small towns.
When they do trade cycles for scooters, the first thing they will do is ride out for a Schezwan dosa.
Samar Halarnkar is the editor of Indiaspend.org and a food writer who runs the blog marriedmaninthekitchen.tumblr.com.
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On the morning of 16 December 1914, the shipping town of Hartlepool in north-east England was bombarded by the German Navy during its first attack on the UK's home front during World War One.
| During the 40-minute attack, 1,150 shells were fired, devastating large areas of the town. It left 130 people dead and hundreds more injured.
On the 100th anniversary, listen to archive recordings of survivors recalling the attack.
All images courtesy of Hartlepool Culture and Information. Audio courtesy of Teesside Archives and BBC Tees.
Related:
Hartlepool Bombardment: How it unfolded on 16 December 1914
You may also like:
When the Germans bombarded Hartlepool
Britannia 'did not rule the waves'
BBC World War One
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The Northern Ireland unemployment rate has hit another record low. | By John CampbellBBC News NI Economics & Business Editor
In the three months between May and July 2019 it was just 2.8% compared to to a UK rate of 3.8%.
Meanwhile, the employment rate was recorded as 72%, which is the second highest on record.
This is a measurement of the percentage of working-age adults who are in employment and compares to the recession when the employment rate in Northern Ireland dropped to 64%.
The UK employment rate is 76.1% - its joint highest on record.
Northern Ireland's economic inactivity rate is also continuing to show improvement.
Economic inactivity is a measurement of those people who are not in work and not looking for work - that includes students, retired people and sick or disabled people.
Northern Ireland has an inactivity rate that is significantly and persistently higher than the UK rate.
The latest figures show the inactivity rate has fallen by 1.3 percentage points during the year to 25.8% - which is one of the lowest rates on record.
However it is still the highest of the 12 UK regions.
The Northern Ireland Statistics Agency (Nisra) says the strong job market has had a notable impact on inactivity and long-term unemployment.
"The number of people aged 16 and over who have been unemployed for one year or more is approximately half the level estimated this time last year, while the number of economically inactive has decreased by 15,000," said a Nisra spokesman.
"The continued improvements in the Northern Ireland labour market are consistent with the UK experience.
"It is worth noting, while the Northern Ireland unemployment rate is the joint second lowest of all the UK regions, NI has the second lowest employment rate and highest inactivity rate."
Recession warning
Meanwhile, professional services firm EY has cut expectations for economic growth next year in Northern Ireland and warned a no-deal Brexit scenario would push the local economy into recession.
Its forecast has been revised down from 1.2% to 1.1% growth next year, based on the assumption of an "orderly" Brexit.
But in a no-deal scenario, it suggests the Northern Ireland economy would contract by 0.6%.
EY also said a no-deal Brexit would result in 60,300 fewer jobs across the island by 2022; 41,500 fewer in the Republic of Ireland and 18,800 fewer in Northern Ireland.
Prof Neil Gibson, chief economist at EY Ireland said: "A no-deal Brexit has the potential to push Northern Ireland into recession and to lead to a contraction in the labour market, which so far has consistently proven wrong some of our gloomier predictions.
"Although estimates of a no-deal impact vary considerably, they all suggest there will be a cost in the form of disruption across the island," he added.
The report said that in the event of a "difficult" Brexit, there would be jobs lost, but added these were unlikely to be in the locations or with the skills profiles that are in demand from employers for whom Brexit is not a major consideration.
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A man with multiple sclerosis (MS) who requires almost 24-hour care has said he "can't exist" without the help of care assistants and has called for them to be given more reward for their work. | Martin Harney said he was finding it increasingly difficult to find carers as those who do the job are leaving the profession due to low pay.
He said carers' 15-minute home calls were putting pressure on them and him.
Independent care providers have warned that they are struggling to cope.
Rising costs, including the recently introduced National Living Wage, means some companies are struggling to stay afloat, the Independent Health and Care Providers has said.
Respect
Northern Ireland's health trusts pay the care provider companies an average of £12 an hour.
From that, the providers pay carers' wages and other costs, such as national insurance, pension contributions and petrol allowance.
But Mr Harney said he did not believe a value could be put on the care he receives.
"It's my life. I can't exist without it. I need people with me all the time," he said.
"At the minute I'm finding it very hard to find carers because those who wanted to do the job were not getting the respect and pay the needed.
"The carer people don't get the satisfaction or the reward that they deserve."
Tough
He receives 15-minute visits from his carers, and during that time they have to wash, dress and feed him, as well as give him medication.
He said that is not enough time those tasks to be carried out.
Charlene McCoy, who is Mr Harney's care assistant, said that while she loves her job it can be "extremely tough".
"The fact you have to try and squeeze so many duties to be able to give the right level of care at all times to that client within 15 minutes is extremely difficult," Ms McCoy said.
"I'm committed to my clients, I like to speak to them on a personal, human level rather than rush in and out of calls."
Commitments
She said that she wants to remain in the job but the level of pay she receives leaves her in a difficult position.
"Unfortunately, the minimum wage attachment to this just does not place the value that I have personally to the role," she said.
"I have personal financial commitments to keep up.
"If we don't raise the wage for this, the likes of myself will be forced to look elsewhere.
"People have to leave a career that they are so passionate about just so they can continue to look after themselves."
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The introduction of compulsory dog micro chipping has been called for by the Guernsey Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (GSPCA). | The move comes after it was announced that every dog owner in England would have to microchip their animal by 2016.
The GSPCA deals with about 200 stray dogs every year and about 45% have micro chips.
UK Government figures show more than 100,000 dogs are dumped, stray or lost each year at a cost of £57m.
Steve Byrne, manager at the GSPCA, said the charity has been "encouraging dog owners to get their animals micro chipped for nearly two decades".
People who own dogs in Guernsey over the age of six months have to pay a £10 dog tax, which is required annually.
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A gunman killed four Marines in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in front of military recruitment centres on Thursday. Three of the men had done numerous tours serving the US across the globe while another was just getting started with his career in the military.
On Saturday, a sailor who was seriously injured in the shootings died in hospital. Here is what we know about the five victims.
| Gunney Sgt Thomas J Sullivan
Sullivan grew up in Springfield, Massachusetts, and served two tours in Iraq, earning a Purple Heart.
Mayor of Springfield Dominic Sarno said in a statement that Sullivan's death is "a tragic loss not just for the Springfield community but for our entire nation".
He was enlisted in the military for nearly 18 years.
Tributes poured in for Sullivan, 40, on the Facebook page for Massachusetts eatery Nathan Bill's Bar and Restaurant, of which Sullivan's brother Joe is a part owner.
"He was our hero and he will never be forgotten. Please keep his family and friends in your thoughts and prayers. Thank you Tommy for protecting us," one post read.
Lance Cpl Squire K "Skip" Wells
Wells grew up in Georgia an graduated high school in 2012. The 21-year-old had been enrolled as a student at Georgia Southern University in 2013, but ultimately dropped out to enter the Marine Corps. He enlisted in 2014 and was a field artillery cannoneer.
The university said in a statement: "The community is saddened by the news that former student and Marine Skip Wells was killed yesterday in the Chattanooga tragedy along with three fellow Marines... The Eagle Nation offers our deepest condolences to his family and the families of those killed and wounded during this incident."
He had recently left home for a three-week commitment in Chattanooga. His family friend Andy Kingery told the AP Wells "died doing what he wanted to do and had chosen to do."
Caroline Dove, his girlfriend, was texting him the day of the shooting. She had just booked a trip to Chattanooga to see him. He texted her "ACTIVE SHOOTER" and it was the last she heard from him.
The two met at Georgia Southern University. He dreamed of being a drill sergeant, Ms Dove said.
Staff Sgt David A Wyatt
Wyatt was a Burke County, North Carolina resident who served in both Iraq and Afghanistan, serving as a Marine for more than 11 years.
He enlisted in 2004 and was deployed three times.
He was married with two children. Neighbours packed his home on Thursday to pay their respects, The Tennessean reports.
Family members posted on Facebook that there was "no sleep tonight" following the attacks.
Tony Ward, who was Wyatt's Boy Scouts supervisor when he was in high school in Russellville, Arkansas, said Wyatt enjoyed life, was a "hard charger" and that he cared deeply about his job and his colleagues serving with him.
"He's the kind of man that this country needs more of," Ward said.
Sgt Carson A Holmquist
Carson hailed from Grantsburg, Wisconsin and served in Afghanistan. He was very proud to be a Marine, even visiting his high school after boot camp wearing his "formal blues".
His high school principal Josh Watt described him as a strong football player and someone who loved to hunt and fish.
Holmquist enlisted in the military in January 2009 and had been serving as an automotive maintenance technician, completing two deployments in Afghanistan.
"It's a very tough day in Grantsburg," Watt said.
Reached by phone by the AP, Holmquist's father and grandfather said they were not ready to talk yet.
Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Randal Smith
In a brief statement on Saturday, the Navy said a petty officer died from his wounds overnight.
It did not identify the sailor, but he was later named by his family members.
Smith - from Paulding, Ohio - leaves behind a wife and three daughters.
"It's hard to understand how somebody can hurt somebody that's serving for you, for your freedom, for you safety," his step-grandmother Darlene Proxmire told WANE television.
Smith joined the service after attending college in Ohio, his grandmother Linda Wallace told the Associated Press news agency.
He had reportedly recently re-enlisted and was transferred to Chattanooga.
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The internet of things (IoT) promises many advantages - smart cities with integrated transport systems, for instance - but it comes with a significantly increased cybersecurity risk. So how should we be tackling this new threat? | By Padraig BeltonTechnology of Business reporter
Christoph Brandstatter is managing director of the four-star Seehotel, Jagerwirt, in Austria's Alps.
His hotel's electronic door locks and other systems were hacked for ransom four times, between December 2016 and January 2017.
"We got a ransomware mail which was hidden in a bill from Telekom Austria," says Mr Brandstatter.
His hotel's door keys became unusable after he clicked on a link to his bill. So was his hard drive.
"Actually, as a small business you do not really think that anybody's interested in you for hacking, so we had no plan what to do," he recalls.
He paid a ransom of two bitcoins, saying "at that time it was about €1,600 (£1,406: $1,882)".
He has now installed firewalls and new antivirus software, and has trained his staff to recognise phishing emails that may seem genuine but actually contain malware.
And he's moved back to traditional metal keys.
"We've got good feedback about the old-fashioned keys," he says. "It gives guests a homely feeling."
On 5 December 2017, Mr Brandstatter received an email from Austrian police telling him his passwords had been found on a computer in the south of England.
This is the new threat presented by the internet of things - the growing number of devices connected to the internet, from keycard locking systems to coffee makers, security cameras to wi-fi routers.
Around 21 billion of these so-called "smart devices" will be in use by 2020, up from 6.4 billion in 2016, research firm Gartner believes.
These days, you can even get hacked through your fish tank.
A US casino's smart fish tank that could regulate its own salinity, temperature, and feeding schedules, was hacked earlier this year and used to gain access to the firm's wider network.
The hackers were able to steal 10 gigabytes of data from the casino's computers and store it on a device in Finland.
"It was a different type of attack, much more targeted and much more insidious, managing to break into an organisation and then move laterally," says Mike Lloyd, chief technology officer at Silicon Valley cybersecurity firm RedSeal.
Following the Mirai hack attack in 2016, we know how easy it is for hackers to gain control of computer networks through insecure devices and then use these "botnets" to launch attacks.
Cybergangs can hire these botnets to send spam or carry out massive DDoS [distributed denial of service] attacks that knock servers offline.
Meanwhile, "we're starting to see attacks focusing on compromising the integrity of data", says Jason Hart, chief technology officer for Dutch digital security firm Gemalto.
Hackers leave the data in place, but subtly change it, seducing a company into making a poor decision that benefits a competitor, or causes its share price to fall.
So what's to be done?
Conventional cyber-security software spots about 80% of attacks by learning and then recognising the unique signatures of each piece of malware that comes on to the market.
But with millions being created every week, keeping abreast of them is nigh impossible - lots slip through the net.
So cybersecurity companies have been developing a different approach, one that monitors the behaviour of the computer network and tries to spot dodgy behaviour.
For example, Eli David, co-founder of Tel-Aviv-based cybersecurity firm Deep Instinct, says his firm can spot 99% of IoT attacks.
Mr David, is a former university lecturer and an expert in deep learning, a branch of artificial intelligence.
In brief, machine learning algorithms monitor a network's "normal" activity - learning the usual patterns of behaviour of all the connected devices on that network. Once it has built up a picture of what is usual, it can then spot the unusual far more easily.
"Deep learning just looks at the raw binary [the patterns of zeros and ones]," he says, "so we don't care whether a file is from Windows, PowerPoint, or Android."
This real time behavioural monitoring requires speedy computing, so Deep Instinct uses powerful graphics processors made by Nvidia.
"The only thing that comes out of the lab is a small, pre-trained brain that is a deep learning model of about 10-20 megabytes," he says, "and this is the only thing we put on the devices."
More Technology of Business
But there are downsides, RedSeal's Mike Lloyd admits.
With deep learning algorithms it's often impossible to understand the basis on which they made a decision to flag up strange behaviour on the network. Sometimes perfectly innocent behaviour is identified as dubious.
And if the network behaviour changes legitimately, it can take a while for the algorithm to adapt to the "new normal", he says.
Companies like Aruba Networks, Vectra Networks and Alien Vault adopt this kind of automated monitoring approach. Another company, Darktrace claims that its machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithms create an "immune system" that enables the network to fight back against intruders.
Another challenge is simply finding out all the devices that are connecting to your network.
BeyondTrust makes detectors that scan wireless frequencies, while specialist search engines like Shodan.io can find them through the internet. And there are plenty of cyber-security companies, such as SolarWinds, offering device detection software.
The problem with IoT devices is that we often have to rely on the manufacturers to provide security updates. And they often can't be bothered.
So bodies, like the European Commission, are exploring the introduction of minimum smart device security standards.
"We need a regulatory Kitemark - we have it for cars and batteries," says Rik Ferguson, vice president of cybersecurity firm Trend Micro.
"The European Commission is looking at this very carefully," says Raphael Crouan, secretary of the EC's Alliance for Internet of Things Innovation.
"It's always a question for regulatory bodies, not wanting to limit innovation," he says.
Regulation and legislation always seem to play catch-up with technology.
Dave Palmer, technology director at UK threat intelligence firm Darktrace, says: "I think in five years we'll suddenly get secure products because people will throw away their first smart televisions and video conferencing units - it's a natural cycle."
Until then, the hackers could have a field day.
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Exactly six years after his inauguration, President Barack Obama offers Congress and the nation another State of the Union address. A look at these annual speeches reveals the rising and falling fortunes of the president's tumultuous time in office. | By Anthony ZurcherBBC News, Washington
As Mario Cuomo, the two-term governor of New York who died earlier this month, once said: "You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose." If so, Mr Obama's 20 January, 2009, inaugural address was the final speech of the historic 2008 presidential campaign, emphasising hope and opportunity over specific policy goals.
"On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord," Mr Obama said from the steps of the US Capitol. "On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics."
In an address to a joint session of Congress Mr Obama made a month later - a State of the Union in all but name - the president made a more workman-like effort, setting a tone and style he would largely follow in all of his congressional addresses. He talked of the need to rebuild the economy, then in the midst of a severe downturn, and touted the $787bn [£518bn] stimulus spending law the Democratic-controlled Congress had just passed.
In those early months of his presidency, Mr Obama was at the height of his power. With approval ratings in the mid-60s and sizable majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, he and his party firmly controlled the levers of power.
During his February speech the president laid out an ambitious agenda. He endorsed financial regulation reform, an overhaul of the nation's health insurance system and a cap-and-trade plan for regulating greenhouse gasses. He also pledged to end the US war in Iraq and close the Guantanamo Bay detention centre.
Mr Obama again addressed Congress in September of 2009 to help push healthcare reform through Congress, but by his first formal State of the Union Address in 2010, storm clouds were on the horizon.
The public was wary of the increasing budget deficits and an economy that was still reeling. While the recession had officially ended in June 2009, the unemployment rate wouldn't come down from its peak of 9.9% until April 2010. The president pledged a government spending freeze and cuts to unaffordable or unnecessary programmes.
Although later that year the Democrats narrowly passed healthcare and financial sector reform, it would be the last legislative achievement for Mr Obama's party. Cap-and-trade was all but dead, and Republicans blocked action on Guantanamo. The grass-roots conservative Tea Party movement was growing in strength, and it would sweep Republicans to control of the House of Representatives in the 2010 mid-term elections
The president's next two State of the Union addresses, and a September 2011 address to Congress on jobs legislation, would be more reactive in nature. His proposals would remain largely unpassed.
After winning re-election the president in his 2013 State of the Union address called for an increase in the minimum wage, more funding for college education and climate change legislation. The speech was dominated by talk of firearm regulation, however, on the heels of the attack that left 20 children and six adults dead in a Newtown, Connecticut, elementary school.
With Republicans still in control in the House, however, none of these policy items would become law.
By his 2014 State of the Union address, the president seemed resigned to the fact that none of his legislative priorities would be endorsed by Congress. His approval ratings had sunk to new lows, thanks in part to a botched rollout of the healthcare.gov website the previous autumn.
The president's speech focused primarily on things he could accomplish without congressional approval, such as limited immigration reform and greenhouse gas regulation. The "unity of purpose" the president spoke of in 2009 seemed a distant memory.
Now, exactly six years after his first inaugural address, the president - his dark hair now generously peppered with grey - speaks to the US people, and Congress, again. For the first time in his presidency, thanks to his party's rout in the 2014 mid-term elections, he faces a legislature wholly controlled by his political opponents.
Perhaps counter-intuitively this development may more clearly define the president's remaining power. Where over the past four years he could count on the Democratic Senate to snarl Republican plans hatched in the Republican House of Representatives, the chance that legislation he finds unappealing reaches his desk is now considerably greater.
He may finally find it necessary to wield one of the most powerful weapons in the presidential arsenal, the veto.
The president's standing with the American people may be on the upturn, as well. His approval ratings have rebounded from the lows that helped seal his party's fate last year. The employment rate continues to decline, reaching 5.6% in December.
The president is now fully on the defence in Congress, but he appears willing to counter-punch, with revamped proposals to make higher education more affordable and reform the tax structure. Whether it makes any difference to how the Republicans go about their agenda over the next year remains to be seen, however.
The reality is that this likely is the last real chance the president has to use a high-profile speech to put his imprint on US politics and policy. He has one more State of the Union address to give, in January 2016, but by then the race to succeed him in office will be in full swing. Both parties will be in the midst of choosing new standard-bearers, and legislative action will grind to a halt.
By then all eyes will be focused on the identity of the next person who will speak to the nation from the steps of the Capitol.
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Letters sent by Britain's most notorious serial killers to schoolchildren, supermarket shelf-stackers and lonely women have been used by the creator of TV drama Taggart for a new play at the Edinburgh Fringe. | By Ian YoungsArts reporter, BBC News
Moors Murderer Ian Brady, who killed five children in north-west England in the 1960s, tells a schoolboy his favourite film is Bambi.
Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, who murdered 13 women in the 1970s and 80s, assures an infatuated woman he is no longer dangerous because he now ignores the voices in his head.
Dennis Nilsen, who killed 15 predominantly homosexual men in his London flat and disposed of their bodies by boiling body parts in his kitchen, gives relationship advice to a confused Waitrose worker who is looking for a gay affair.
This is an unholy trinity of the most evil men in modern Britain.
The revelations - which range from the chilling to the surreal to the mundane - are contained in unpublished letters written from their cells to pen pals in the outside world, explains Taggart creator Glenn Chandler.
Chandler has acquired correspondence from these serial murderers. They now form the basis for his play Killers.
A dozen letters written by Ian Brady to a schoolboy and 15 from Nilsen to the shelf-stacker were bought from a dealer, Chandler says, while 150 from Sutcliffe to a woman who wanted to marry him came from an "anonymous source".
"Believe me, lots of women write to the Yorkshire Ripper and fall in love with him," Chandler says.
"The strangest people become fans of serial killers." As the writer of Taggart, which ran for 27 years until 2010, Chandler has spent more time than most trying to get into the minds of murderers.
In his new play, the three men are portrayed on stage at their writing desks.
"The exciting thing about the letters is the little mundane things about them, such as Ian Brady talking about his favourite film, which happens to be Bambi," Chandler says.
"And the avuncular advice that these serial killers give their fans on the outside. Ian Brady is advising his schoolboy correspondent to stick with school, and not follow a life of crime like he did, and become a mechanic or a chef and he picks him up on his handwriting.
"Dennis Nilsen likewise. One gets the impression the boy is writing to him saying, 'I'm very lonely I don't have any friends.' Denis Nilsen is writing saying, 'Look, you've got to go out and make friends.'
"He tells Denis Nilsen that he wants to go out and have a gay relationship. Denis Nilsen says, 'Remember, a gay relationship is a two-way thing. You must give and take.' Yet here's a guy who killed 15 of them and chopped up their bodies.
"So some of the ironies in the letters are absolutely fascinating."
There is "a fantastic amount of insight" into the psyches of the killers, Chandler suggests.
Brady refuses to answer his young correspondent's questions about his crimes and shows no remorse, according to Chandler, who says Brady asks the boy: "Why are you interested in me?
"Why aren't you interested in an American Air Force pilot who drops bombs on a village in Iraq? Is it because he kills with official permission and I don't kill with official permission? Is that what makes me so interesting?"
Chandler adds: "He goes on about that but he won't talk about his crimes.
"The Yorkshire Ripper, on the other hand, he does. He says to his lady correspondent, 'I'm cured now. I still hear the voices telling me to do these bad things, but I know that they're bad and I don't listen to them any more. If I got out now I'd be all right, I'd be perfectly safe, I wouldn't hurt you.'
"He says, 'I know all the things I did were bad and I wish I could put the clock back and not do them.' You get the feeling that there's not a lot of sincerity there. 'The things I did were bad' is a bit of an understatement."
The trio are linked by a sense of self-importance that comes from the knowledge that they have a reputation as "criminal celebrities", Chandler believes.
"If you're Peter Sutcliffe and you get 50 letters a month from different women… He never had that when he was a lorry driver."
In Brady's recent mental health tribunal, he unsuccessfully argued for a return to prison from a secure hospital. It was his first public appearance since his trial in 1966 and was criticised for simply giving him the attention he craved.
Won't a play in which they are centre stage feed their egos even more?
"I would respond to that by saying that for me, the most interesting aspect of the psychology is the people who are writing to the serial killers," Chandler says.
"The schoolboy, the guy who works in Waitrose as a shelf-filler, the woman who is in love with the Yorkshire Ripper. It's really the psychology of the writers and why they write reflected through the killers' letters that I think is the main focus of the play."
That is a little unconvincing given that it is the killers who are portrayed on stage, not their pen pals. Chandler says he only has the inmates' side of the correspondence.
If the show is feeding the reputations of these "criminal celebrities", so have countless books and TV dramas.
"I think they get enough publicity without a Fringe production to be honest," Chandler says.
Still, word about the play has reached Nilsen. Chandler says the killer contacted him through a third party after an early performance in Brighton.
"Someone had reported back to him and he said to me, 'Glenn, bear in mind I'm just a 68-year-old geezer and I accept that people will always want to write plays or books or articles about me.'"
Killers is at the Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh, from 1-25 August.
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A man has appeared in court accused of assaulting a barman with a bottle. | Jack Shepherd, 31, is charged with causing grievous bodily harm with intent in the Newton Abbot area of Devon in March last year.
Mr Shepherd, whose last address was in Bristol, appeared before District Judge Diane Baker at Plymouth Magistrates' Court via video link.
Solicitor Richard Egan told the hearing he was unable to give an indication of plea at this stage.
Mr Shepherd was remanded in custody to appear before Exeter Crown Court on 30 May.
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The Rohingyas - a distinct Muslim ethnic group who are effectively stateless - have been fleeing Myanmar for decades. But a combination of factors means many are now stranded in rickety boats off the coasts of Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia with dwindling supplies of food and water. | Also on the boats are thousands of economic migrants from Bangladesh fleeing grinding poverty at home.
Why are the Rohingyas fleeing Myanmar?
While the Rohingyas say they are descendants of Arab traders who have been in the region for generations, Myanmar's governments say they are not a genuine ethnic group but are actually Bengali migrants. Successive Myanmar governments have been introducing policies to repress the Rohingya since the 1970s, according to Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK (Brouk).
They are denied basic services and their movements are severely restricted. The repression of the Rohingyas has gradually intensified since the process of reforms introduced by President Thein Sein in 2011, Brouk says. In June and October 2012 there were large scale attacks on Rohingyas in Rakhine State following the gang rape of a Buddhist woman.
In addition, the government in March revoked temporary registration certificates issued to hundreds of thousands of Rohingyas, meaning they can no longer vote.
So inflammatory is the Rohingya issue that opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been criticised for failing to raise it.
In the past three years, more than 120,000 Rohingyas have boarded ships to flee abroad, according to the UN refugee agency. It says 25,000 migrants left Myanmar and Bangladesh in the first quarter of this year, about double the number over the same period last year. Between 40-60% of the 25,000 are thought to originate from Myanmar's western state of Rakhine.
Why are they stranded at sea?
As many as 8,000 migrants from Bangladesh and Myanmar are believed by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) to be stranded at sea.
The Thai government has recently begun to crack down on smugglers who have traditionally taken them to camps in southern Thailand and effectively held them ransom. As a result the smugglers are now reportedly abandoning them at sea. Not only are countries in the region unwilling to let them land, fishermen are being told not to help them.
Who are the Rohingyas?
Myanmar's unwanted people
What is the attitude to Rohingyas among countries of the region?
"Extremely unwelcoming," says Chris Lewa of the Rohingya activist group Arakan Project. "Unlike European countries - who at least make an effort to stop North African migrants from drowning in the Mediterranean - Myanmar's neighbours are reluctant to provide any assistance."
Whose responsibility is it to ensure that the refugees are fed and watered?
Most aid agencies and NGOs agree that countries in the region have a moral imperative - if not a legal requirement - to do this if the refugees are in their territorial waters.
Legal experts point out that some countries may be unwilling to act because by doing so they are more likely to be exposed to the principle of non-refoulement, whereby refugees cannot be forcibly returned to places where their lives or freedoms may be threatened.
Can the Rohingya problem be resolved?
"Not until or unless the international community puts pressure on Myanmar to improve the lives of the Rohingya community," Chris Lewa argues, "because ultimately it is only Burma who can solve the problem."
Critics argue these countries have been quietly ignoring the plight of the Rohingyas for years and as a result now find themselves enveloped in a deepening humanitarian crisis.
A series of meetings have now been called in the region to address the crisis, but Myanmar is refusing to attend them.
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The operator of Aberdeen Market has been placed into liquidation. | The building in Aberdeen city centre has been closed since the beginning of lockdown.
In April, plans were approved to demolish the premises, making way for a new office, retail and leisure space.
Administrator Cowgills has confirmed in a statement that Aberdeen Market Village was placed into Creditors Voluntary Liquidation on 11 June, and has now ceased trading.
Developer Patrizia hopes to inject "new vibrancy" into the area with the redevelopment plans.
The plan is for news shops, cafes and office space.
The building dates back to the 1970s.
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A training exercise to test emergency and rescue organisations' response to flash floods in Lydney, Forest of Dean, has taken place. | The three-day exercise was ordered due to the town's close proximity to the Severn estuary and the River Lyd.
Eight organisations, including police, fire, and ambulance, tested their response to an incident akin to floods inBoscastle, Cornwall, in 2004.
A £720,000 flood wall and embankment was built in Lydney in October 2011.
The Environment Agency said the project in the Station Road and Mead Lane area would reduce the risk of river flooding to 1% in any given year.
The flood response exercises took place on 21, 23 and 29 March.
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A merger between Ticketmaster and concert promoter Live Nation has been cleared again by the UK's Competition Commission. | The commission had originally cleared the deal in December, but agreed to review the decision after a challenge from rival ticket agency Eventim.
However, it concluded the deal would not lead to a "substantial lessening" of competition in UK ticket retailing.
The US Justice Department cleared the tie-up in January.
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The "gig economy" suits Hannah Jones. | By Rebecca MarstonBusiness reporter, BBC News
"I'm studying, so I can work when I want and for how long I want to. There aren't really any downsides for me at the moment," she says.
Hannah works for Deliveroo, one of the best-known companies in the business thanks to protests by drivers in the summer against proposed changes to the way they are paid.
She is part of a growing army of such workers.
According to new research by global consultants McKinsey, the popular concept of work as a traditional nine-to-five job with a single employer bears little resemblance to the way in which a substantial share of the workforce makes a living.
The McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) estimates that the independent workforce is some 162 million people, up to 30% of the working-age population in the United States and most of Europe. Official UK figures bear this out, with almost five million people in the UK employed in this way.
'Reluctant and strapped'
The report looked at the full spectrum of ways in which individuals earned income outside traditional employee roles. It says independent workers fit into four key segments:
'Downside'
Hannah Jones picked up this casual way of working after losing interest in her job in corporate finance and deciding to study for a Master's degree in developmental psychology.
She reckons she fits into two of the categories.
She has savings from her previous well-paid finance job, but still needs to top that up. Essentially, she's a casual who is earning supplemental income. She is also a "reluctant" in the sense that her aim is for a traditional job in the mental health field.
Appropriately, perhaps, she mentions the mental health upside to working outdoors delivering on her bike: "I've been outdoors all summer, it's been great for producing endorphins."
But there are plenty who find there are downsides to working for companies like Deliveroo, Uber and any of the other companies that pull together workers with services.
Although workers are classed as self-employed, some companies expect their workers to be freely and regularly available, to such an extent that there is no time to work for anyone else.
Meanwhile, they get none of the benefits, such as sick pay and pensions, that workers for other companies do.
Solutions
Frank Field MP has called such practices "bogus self-employment". He is among those who want a parliamentary inquiry into this new world of casualisation.
McKinsey says its survey found the majority of independent workers in all countries participated by choice and were attracted by the flexibility and autonomy.
But it says solutions will need to be found to the problem of benefits, income security and training, whether that be through government or new technological innovation of the type that created these platforms in the first place.
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Prime Minister Boris Johnson has taken the step of writing to all of the MPs who sit in the House of Commons, outlining his plans to ask for a suspension of Parliament in the first half of September. The move will limit the number of parliamentary days available for opponents of a no-deal Brexit to try to block that possibility. | Dear colleague,
I hope that you had an enjoyable and productive summer recess, with the opportunity for some rest ahead of the return of the House.
I wanted to take this opportunity to update you on the Government's plans for its business in Parliament.
As you know, for some time parliamentary business has been sparse.
The current session has lasted more than 340 days and needs to be brought to a close - in almost 400 years only the 2010-12 session comes close, at 250 days.
Bills have been introduced, which, while worthy in their own right, have at times seemed more about filling time in both the Commons and the Lords, while key Brexit legislation has been held back to ensure it could still be considered for carry-over into a second session.
This cannot continue.
I therefore intend to bring forward a new bold and ambitious domestic legislative agenda for the renewal of our country after Brexit.
There will be a significant Brexit legislative programme to get through but that should be no excuse for a lack of ambition!
We will help the NHS, fight violent crime, invest in infrastructure and science and cut the cost of living.
This morning I spoke to Her Majesty The Queen to request an end to the current parliamentary session in the second sitting week in September, before commencing the second session of this Parliament with a Queen's speech on Monday 14 October.
A central feature of the legislative programme will be the Government's number one legislative priority, if a new deal is forthcoming at EU Council, to introduce a Withdrawal Agreement Bill and move at pace to secure its passage before 31 October.
I fully recognise that the debate on the Queen's Speech will be an opportunity for Members of Parliament to express their view on this Government's legislative agenda and its approach to, and the result of, the European Council on 17-18 October.
It is right that you should have the chance to do so, in a clear and unambiguous manner.
I also believe it is vitally important that the key votes associated with the Queen's Speech and any deal with the EU fall at a time when parliamentarians are best placed to judge the Government's programme.
Parliament will have the opportunity to debate the Government's overall programme, and approach to Brexit, in the run up to EU Council, and then vote on this on 21 and 22 October, once we know the outcome of the Council.
Should I succeed in agreeing a deal with the EU, Parliament will then have the opportunity to pass the Bill required for ratification of the deal ahead of 31 October.
Finally, I want to reiterate to colleagues that these weeks leading up to the European Council on 17/18 October are vitally important for the sake of my negotiations with the EU.
Member States are watching what Parliament does with great interest and it is only by showing unity and resolve that we stand a chance of securing a new deal that can be passed by Parliament.
In the meantime, the Government will take the responsible approach of continuing its preparations for leaving the EU, with or without a deal.
The Leader of the Commons will update the House in the normal fashion with regard to business for the final week.
For now, I can confirm that on Monday 9 September both Houses will debate the motions on the first reports relating to the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation etc) Act 2019 (NIEFA).
Following these debates we will begin preparation to end the Parliamentary session ahead of a Queen's Speech.
The Business Managers in both Houses will shortly engage with their opposite numbers, and MPs more widely, on plans for passing a deal should one be forthcoming.
Decisions will also need to be taken about carrying over some of the bills currently before the House, and we will look to work constructively with the Opposition on this front.
If agreement cannot be reached we will look to reintroduce the bills in the next session, and details on this will be set out in the Queen's Speech.
As always my door is open to all colleagues should you wish to discuss this or any other matter.
Yours sincerely,
Boris Johnson
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Ask anyone from outside Wales to name something for which we're famous, and the odds are that the name of Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch on Anglesey would rank in their top five.
| By Neil PriorBBC News, Wales
But what's really in a place name?
Should Beddau in Rhondda Cynon Taf be pronounced "Bather", as many of the locals do, or "Beth-eye" according to its roots in Welsh?
A group of geographical and historical experts from around Wales say Welsh place names are particularly important, as they tend to be descriptive of the conditions at the time of naming, whereas English place-names are subject to obscure influences from Latin, German, French and Scandinavian languages.
Despite the rich source of information which they could hold, Wales does not have a national place-name body monitoring trends and derivations, as does Scotland, England and Northern Ireland.
Yet a conference this weekend, organised by The Snowdonia National Park, Cymdeithas Edward Llwyd and the Welsh Assembly Government is aiming to change that, by drawing together historians, geographers and linguists to form Wales' own place name society.
Twm Elias of Snowdonia's Plas Tan y Bwlch study centre, has helped organise the Llên Natur conference, and explained:
"It's not so much how people pronounce place-names today, it's about recording how locations have been named, written and pronounced over time."
"People who live in Beddau are welcome to call it 'Bather' or 'Beth-eye' as they choose; it's their town after all! But if we forget that the town's name comes from Beddau, the Welsh for graves, then we'd be losing an understanding of its possible roots as an ancient, pre-Christian burial site."
But whilst the true meaning of Beddau's name is not fully understood, many other historical, socio-economic, and environmental riddles have been solved through the study of how our ancestors named their lands.
Through the name of Dôl-y-Pennau in Snowdonia ( which translates into "Meadow of Heads"), members of the Llên Natur project were able to point archaeologists to the previously-undiscovered site of a massacre between feuding Welsh princes, which resulted in dozens of people being beheaded before their heads were discarded in a field in the area named in their memory.
A study of a concentration in eastern Wales, of places bearing the suffix 'Wern' or 'Gwern' has similarly lent fresh understanding to the trade links between medieval Wales and the Norman Marcher states.
Gwern derives from the Welsh for alder tree, the willow-like wood from which was used to manufacture clogs for agricultural workers.
While the trees are native throughout Wales, the frequency of Wern and Gwern in the east of the country pointed historians towards studying potential sites where they may have been grown on a commercial basis, for sale to agricultural areas over the border in Herefordshire and Shropshire.
But not all the discoveries are of a purely historical nature.
The pine marten, a small mammal once native to Wales, is now facing extinction.
However, the number of places which include 'bela' - Welsh for pine marten - in their name is testament to the frequency with which they were once found here.
Conservationists are using these places as a starting point to study satellite imagery for potential sites where pine martens may one day be re-introduced into the wild.
This weekend's conference is the culmination of years of work by Duncan Brown, a Welsh-speaker whose work for the Countryside Council for Wales led to his fascination with the links between language and environment.
But he warned: "It's sometimes dangerous to read too much into place names, or to take them too literally."
"For example, places with 'eos' suffixes derive from the Welsh for nightingale. They're no longer native to Wales, and there's some debate whether they ever were.
"Yet there are two clusters of 'eos' names in Wales, one around Carmarthenshire and Glamorganshire, and another in the north, centred around Denbighshire and northern Powys."
"The south Wales group are prefixed with terms like 'llwyn', a copse, or 'y-pant' , a hollow, which correspond with the natural habitat of nightingales."
"However, the group in the north have prefixes like 'llety'r', from the Welsh for a tavern or inn.
"So the reference to nightingale is far more likely to have originated from someone who sung there, with the voice of a nightingale."
Message of importance
The Llên Natur conference is being opened with an address by Culture Minister Alun Ffred Jones.
Mr Brown is hoping this will prove indicative of more concrete support for the project.
"It's fantastic to have Alun Ffred along to speak anyway, as it's a real recognition of the hard work everyone has put in," he said.
"Everyone knows that there's not much money to go around at the moment, but inexpensive things could make a big difference."
"We've already made a huge start on a database of place-names and their origins on the Llên Natur website, and with access to support from the assembly (government) we could go even further."
"Also, some within the group would like to see legislation brought before the assembly to prevent historic Welsh place names becoming anglicised or changed altogether to ones with no local significance."
"Even if the resources weren't available to police it rigorously, the simple presence of legislation would send out a message of the importance that Welsh place names continue to have to this day."
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The Killers have announced details of a new live DVD. | By Greg CochraneNewsbeat music reporter
The Killers: Live From The Albert Hall features footage of the Las Vegas band filmed during two shows at the legendary London venue in July 2009.
A live CD recording of the concerts and a behind the scenes documentary is also included in the package released on 9 November.
Bonus material also includes filmed tracks from the band's summer festival appearances including Oxegen, Hyde Park and V Festival.
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The price of a litre of Guernsey milk will rise by 4p, the Commerce and Employment Department has announced.
| It said the increase to £1.05 reflected cost increases across the industry and recommendations made by the Milk Price Review Panel.
A half litre carton will rise by 2p to 59p, but the cost of organic milk, which is only available in half litres will be unchanged at 78p.
The price rises are due to come in on 2 October.
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A crushed car has fallen off a lorry near the M1 on the Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire border. | It happened on the Stapleford and Sandiacre roundabout near J25 of the motorway at about 06:25 BST.
Highways England told the BBC the driver of the transporter may not have been aware it had fallen off.
It said one lane on the roundabout was closed, causing delays during morning rush hour on the approaches and between J26 and J25 on the M1.
Normal traffic conditions had resumed by about 09:00 BST, it added.
Follow BBC East Midlands on Facebook, on Twitter, or on Instagram. Send your story ideas to [email protected].
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South African President Jacob Zuma has declared a week of national mourning for striking miners killed in violence at a platinum mine on Thursday.
Kitumetse (not her real name) is a resident of Wonderkop village near the Lonmin mine. Here she describes the anger in the local community after last week's incident. | "Our village is right next to the mine, it takes me five minutes to walk there. We all witnessed the shocking events of last week.
My two sisters work at the mine. They were at work when the killing started. They called me to tell me how bad the situation was.
Things are getting worse by the day. I was watching one of my friends yesterday who just found out that their 22-year-old son was dead. They had been looking all over for him for three days.
Until now the police haven't issued a register for the dead or for those who have been arrested. Relatives have to go to the morgue to find out for themselves. Women here are going crazy for not knowing what has happened to their loved ones - and I feel their pain.
I don't blame the policemen for shooting. If they didn't shoot, the miners would have killed them. What the miners did was a despicable barbaric act.
Workers at the mine had been asking for higher wages for so long, the crowd must have [reached] boiling point after no-one listened to them.
'Neglected community'
Lonmin should have intervened a long time ago. They knew about the miners' grievances, they knew about the strike, they knew workers wanted management to come forward, but they didn't intervene and were nowhere to be seen.
They dismissed their workers and let this happen. So many people died - fathers, husbands, bread-winners.
Now they are threatening workers that if they don't go back to work, they will be considered strikers and they will lose their jobs.
Because of that, my sisters are going back to work.
I worry about them. There is still a lot of tension. There are police there, masses and masses of them. They are there not to protect the lives of people, but the property of the mine.
We are so angry. They (Lonmin) don't treat us like people.
Lonmin has done nothing for the local community. They take our platinum and enrich themselves but where is our royalty money going? We don't have tar roads and our youth are unemployed.
They cut off our water supply every day during the day. The water comes back only late at night. Then we have to fill the tanks and the buckets to have enough water for the next day. The water stinks and we have to buy purified water.
Lonmin needs to start taking responsibility for their actions and start doing what is right."
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He was dubbed the real Slumdog millionaire after he became the first person to win the Indian version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire? Like the hero of the Oscar-winning film, Sushil Kumar used his wits to win a fortune - but one year on, his life has changed only a little. | By Rajini VaidyanathanBBC News, Motihari, Bihar
There are many ways you can spend a cool million dollars, but as he leads me into the corner of a dusty shed, Sushil Kumar shows me the first thing he splashed out on.
"This is my generator," he says, beaming at his $500 (£310) purchase. "We get power cuts here for as long as four hours every day. Before I couldn't watch the news and my favourite TV programmes, but now I have this there's no problem."
It was in fact his favourite television programme, which ushered Sushil Kumar into India's millionaire's club.
A year ago, the world watched as the government office clerk from Bihar, one of India's poorest states, became the first contestant to scoop the top prize of 50 million Rupees ($1m, £550,000) on Kaun Banega Crorepathi? (Who wants to be a millionaire?)
Before his appearance on the show, Sushil, a psychology graduate, was earning little more than $100 (£62) a month. By answering 13 questions correctly, he pocketed more than he would have earned in 800 years.
The story made headlines around the world, because it was almost identical to the plot of the film Slumdog Millionaire, where a man from a humble background hits the jackpot on the quiz show. In the film you don't find out how it changed the hero's life - but you get the sense there is going to be a transformation.
At Sushil's house in the town of Motihari, a fading, slightly dog-eared picture of the show's host, Bollywood megastar Amitabh Bachchan is taped to the wall - one of the few visible reminders of events a year ago.
The family home is very basic. Each of the four main rooms has a double bed, in the corner of one is a small television. It's here he lives with his wife, his mother and father, four brothers, two sisters-in-law and one child - 11 in all.
"Because we live in a very small town, my economic problems have been solved 100%," he says. "I feel it's a miracle nothing less. It's God's blessing."
Sitting cross-legged on his bed, Sushil shows me another one of his purchases, his first ever computer, a small tablet. Last week he bought a scooter, the only vehicle he owns, even though he has enough money for several high-end sports cars.
Ask him why he's not spent extravagantly since his win, and his reply is: "Slowly, slowly, I'm spending my money carefully."
Even the clothes he wears the day we meet are not new, and were part of his wardrobe before the show. So far, he's spent $200,000 (£124,000) of his winnings.
The biggest slice of this has gone on a plot of land next door, where work is currently under way to build a nine-room house for the entire extended family. "Each bedroom will have an attached bathroom," he says proudly as he walks me around the site.
Sushil says the money has changed him in simple and small ways. He's paid off a brother's debts, bought some jewellery for his wife and put the rest in the bank.
India is a nation known for its savings culture, and it seems Sushil is living up to the stereotype. He's has taken some financial advice on how to invest the money but has also had plenty of offers from people wanting to spend it for him.
"Since I won, a lot of people started writing letters to me asking for money, to buy land, to solve their problems, to pay for operations, their house, their children's wedding."
But Sushil takes a firm line with begging letters.
"In our society if you help one, thousands of people start coming and saying they are needy too," he says.
"A million is a lot of money but not enough if you start helping people, you'll lose it all in a day."
The money has allowed Sushil to quit his job, though.
At the time of his win Sushil said he gleaned much of his general knowledge from the BBC Hindi service. As a voracious consumer of news, he now spends his time watching documentaries and reading newly-bought books.
"I'd like to become a psychology lecturer one day," he says. "I'd also like to build my own personal library."
Sushil's dad explains they now have a cleaner to help with the household chores - as most lower middle class Indians do - and can now also afford to buy better food.
"Before we could only buy half a litre of milk, but now we get two or three litres. Earlier we couldn't buy expensive vegetables, but now we can afford it, all this has changed," he says.
As Sushil's win was watched by 27 million Indians, he definitely has celebrity status.
"Now I go to any part of the country and people recognise me and… want to get pictures taken with me and get my autograph. It's a very good feeling," he says.
He's had offers to appear in films and television shows, and turned them all down, apart from India's version of Strictly Come Dancing, Jhalak Dhikalaja, where he lasted a few weeks.
"I was the kind of person who would stand at the side at a party if people danced, so it was 100% a challenge for me."
His biggest challenge is yet to come, however - the imminent prospect of fatherhood.
Sushil had married his wife Seema months before the show, and the couple are now expecting their first child.
"Now our kids will be brought up very well, their studies will go very well," says Seema.
Does a person change when they become rich overnight?
Psychologist Sanjay Chugh says some people who get rich overnight "go on a complete high" which can make them "elated, euphoric and a bit grandiose".
It's in circumstances like this that people sometimes "become rash and splurge all the money" he says.
But Sushil says nothing has changed about him, and he has no plans even to leave his home town for the bright lights of the cities.
"I'm the same Sushil Kumar, before I won," he says. "And I want to remain the same Sushil Kumar in future."
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Nearly two years after a woman from Norfolk was stabbed and beheaded while in Spain, a date has been set for the case to come to court. | Jennifer Mills-Westley, 60, a retired road safety officer from Norwich, was killed in the resort of Los Cristianos, on the island of Tenerife, in May 2011.
Deyan Deyanov, a Bulgarian man with a history of mental health problems, was arrested on suspicion of murder.
The hearing against him is due to start on 18 February.
Only when the legal proceedings have been completed can a full inquest into Ms Mills-Westley's death finally be held.
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Bernie Sanders formally suspended his presidential campaign on Wednesday, acknowledging that he had no realistic path to winning the Democratic nomination. | Anthony ZurcherNorth America reporter@awzurcheron Twitter
In reality, however, the campaign's death blow came weeks earlier, in Michigan and Missouri, before the Democratic primary season entered suspended animation for weeks, with the coronavirus pandemic shuttering the campaigns and forcing states to postpone their primaries.
It was at that point that it had become painfully clear for all but the most devoted Sanders faithful that there would be no rebound for the campaign; no revival of flagging momentum. Those defeats broke the back of the campaign, with the coronavirus outbreak only temporarily delaying the final reckoning.
Reality sinks in
At Courigan's Irish Pub in St Petersburg, Florida, in early March, a few Sanders campaign workers gathered to watch the results come in from Michigan and Missouri. The significance of what they were watching played out on their faces. Their state's primary was just a week later, and if Sanders couldn't win in the Midwest, where he had done well in his 2016 presidential bid, he had little hope of prevailing in Florida, where he was trounced.
The room was spacious but mostly empty. A solitary Sanders banner hung under a television screen showing cable news coverage of the vote-tally. The mood was funereal. There wouldn't even be a Sanders speech that night to buck up the troops. A scheduled rally from Ohio was cancelled at the last minute because of the pandemic, and he had travelled back to Vermont.
As the steady drone from the television continued, Jeremy Dolan, a 27-year-old cafe owner who was volunteering for Sanders, discussed what he would tell his friends who had helped with the campaign.
"Even if we do not come out victorious, you are still powerful and the ideas that you hold about many important issues are popular across the United States," he said. "We cannot give up on fighting for those issues even if it doesn't go our way here."
Earlier in the day, at a campaign canvassing event at nearby University of South Florida, some of the supporters were less philosophical - and more critical of the Democrat who was beating Sanders.
"Bernie is really the only option if we want a sustainable, progressive future," said Rachelle Wetsman, a senior at the school. "Besides the fact that Joe Biden is losing his mind, his politics stand for nothing. He wants to bring us back to the era that got Trump elected in the first place. But Trump is a symptom, not the cause of these issues."
Silver linings
Although the 2020 Sanders effort, like his first run in 2016, ended in defeat, the drawn-out, subdued conclusion shouldn't overshadow the fact that a lot went right with the Sanders campaign this time around.
Four years ago, he had a somewhat slapdash organisation, started on a shoestring budget and only ramped up once the support - and money - became a torrent. In 2020, the campaign had an unrivalled infrastructure, with a vast network of volunteers and paid staffers, and the funding to compete in every single contest.
For the 2020 campaign, Sanders brought in an astounding $181m in donations, more than half of which came in contributions smaller than $200. Joe Biden, by contrast, raised $88m, most of which came from larger donations.
Another Sanders strength was his dedicated support of young voters - a bedrock of his campaign in 2016. Even when he lost states by large margins to Biden, Sanders carried a majority of voters under 30.
"Politicians are old people," said Wetsman. "It's our future at stake, not theirs. I think young people are fed up, and they know that we need a progressive future."
Sanders also had some success expanding his appeal, with inroads among Latinos. They were the key to the senator's victories in Nevada and California, two states he lost to Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Tio Bernie - "uncle Bernie" - became a term of endearment for many of the senator's young Latino supporters.
"Bernie's message resonates with those who are Latin voters because his story is very similar to the story of people from Latin backgrounds," said Jackie Azis, one of the volunteers at the St Petersburg watch party. "He comes from a family of immigrants that couldn't even afford basic things like curtains and rugs."
Then there are the big-picture victories that Sanders has pointed to as the lasting legacy of his campaign. He says he won the "generational debate", citing his margins among young voters. He has also declared victory in the "ideological debate", pointing to issues like universal healthcare, aggressive steps to address climate change and free college education that have gone from fringe proposals to the mainstream of the party.
"It's common to say now that the Sanders campaign failed," political commentator and author Noam Chomsky said in an interview with Democracy Now radio programme on the day Sanders suspended his campaign. "I think that's a mistake. I think it was an extraordinary success, completely shifting the arena of debate and discussion."
The problem, Sanders conceded at his press conference the day after his Michigan loss, is that while he was shifting the party and winning the hearts of younger voters, he was "losing the debate over electability". And being "electable" - or at least being perceived as someone who could get elected - is what really mattered to Democratic voters this time around.
Warning signs
On a brisk but sunny February morning in Cedar Rapids, James Hood stood with his wife and two adult children to listen to Sanders hold a get-out-the-vote rally on the eve of the Iowa Caucuses.
The retired lawyer from Davenport said he would give the candidate a look, but he wasn't going to vote for him. He said Sanders was too old and too divisive.
"I think a lot of people in this country would find it difficult to vote for Bernie," he said. "Personally, I like him and think he would do OK. But I wonder if maybe he had some policies that were closer to the centre, they might get through, as opposed to doing away with all college costs."
Hood was the kind of voter Sanders needed to win over if he wanted 2020 to turn out differently than 2016. He said he liked Sanders that time around, too, going so far as to put a Bernie sign in his yard. He ended up voting for Hillary Clinton, however, because he thought she was the safer pick.
Four years later, Sanders hadn't changed his mind.
Still, Sanders came very close to becoming the breakaway favourite to win the Democratic nomination. He ended up with the most votes after the extended, chaotic Iowa results were announced a week after the caucuses. In New Hampshire, he posted a narrow victory over Mayor Pete Buttigieg and the rest of the crowded field. Then he dominated Nevada, beating Biden by 26%.
That, it turned out, was the high water mark of the Sanders campaign.
"We are bringing our people together," Sanders told a cheering crowd the night of his win. "In Nevada we have just brought together a multigenerational, multiracial coalition which is not only going to win in Nevada, it's going to sweep this country."
It turned out it didn't sweep the country.
Instead, Sanders ran headlong into a resurgent Biden, who posted a surprisingly strong win in South Carolina just a week later. The former vice-president's support among older and black voters was replicated just a few days later across the south, as he claimed victory in 10 of the 14 states holding primaries on "Super Tuesday".
Sanders's front-runner status was gone.
A week later, he lost Michigan - a state that had given his 2016 campaign new life with a narrow win over Clinton. After that, massive defeats in Florida and Illinois gave Biden a lead that was all but insurmountable.
Missed opportunities
The second-guessing and what-ifs about the Sanders campaign, particularly the senator's moves during those heady moments after New Hampshire and Nevada, have already begun. Could he have made different choices, said things differently, that would resulted in a better outcome?
"There certainly was a week or two that was very exhilarating and optimistic right after Nevada," said Norman Solomon, a California Sanders delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 2016 and co-founder of the progressive advocacy group Roots Action. "I believe that South Carolina was the tipping point against Bernie."
While Sanders succeeded in expanding his coalition among some Latinos, his failure to win over black and elderly voters proved costly. Congressman James Clyburn's endorsement helped Biden win 61% of the black vote in South Carolina - and served as a springboard for the former vice-president.
Meanwhile, Sanders's losses in Michigan and Missouri suggested he was haemorrhaging support among white working-class and union voters who helped him stay competitive against Clinton in mid-west states.
After his Nevada win, the spotlight glare on Sanders became white-hot.
He was pressed during a television interview to explain old comments praising Cuban dictator Fidel Castro's education policies and the communist Sandinista movement in Nicaragua. Those remarks, and his decision to stand by them, almost certainly cost him support in Florida, where Latino voters from the Caribbean and South America associate socialism - even Sanders's "Democratic socialism" - with totalitarian dictatorships.
"I feel like as soon as Bernie said something positive about Castro, that turned a lot of people off," says Maria Zamora, a University of South Florida employee who attended the Sanders event in March. "He was not praising him as an individual, but they view Castro as this person that's in control of everyone and every one's decisions."
Sanders was also accused by more centrist Democratic pundits and commentators of being an extremist. James Carville, who managed Bill Clinton's presidential campaign in 1992, called the Vermont senator an "ideological fanatic".
Sanders snapped back: "We're taking on Trump, the Republican establishment, Carville and the Democratic establishment. But at the end of the day, the grassroots movement that we are putting together of young people, of working people, of people of colour, want real change."
In a tweet on the eve of the Nevada Caucuses, Sanders was even more blunt.
"I've got news for the Republican establishment," he wrote. "I've got news for the Democratic establishment. They can't stop us."
Such an us-against-them framing may have played well with the Sanders base, but it also could have turned off some potential supporters and prodded his opponents within the party to band together to defeat him.
"When things start falling short, I don't think seeking out who to blame, instead of identifying how to adapt, is the smart thing to do," Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - a strong Sanders supporter - told the Washington Post in mid-March. "I think we have to identify, 'OK, how do we bring in people?'"
The opposition
On the eve of the Super Tuesday voting, two of the more centrist candidates - Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg - dropped out and threw their support to Biden. Former Texas Congressman Beto O'Rourke, who had suspended his presidential campaign in 2019, also offered his endorsement.
A Buzzfeed article about the Sanders campaign recounts how one senior staffer was "visibly shaking with nerves" after news of the endorsements came out.
The emotional blow to the campaign was very real.
If Sanders had "played nice", could he have prevented the centrist consolidation and done more to make the party's establishment and more centrist voters and politicians comfortable with his campaign?
"At certain point, it is sort of his fault," said Noah Meyers, an incoming college student who attended the South Florida volunteer event in March. "He couldn't decide if he wanted to play politics or go full throttle against the establishment."
Meyers adds that it probably wouldn't have mattered, however. Sanders was going to get attacked no matter what he did.
"Bernie Sanders is used as a proxy for poor and working people in the United States," he said. "So the fact that the establishment detests Bernie Sanders is not a reflection of Bernie Sanders, it is a reflection that the establishment detests poor and working people."
Solomon also contends that animosity from the mainstream media was perhaps the greatest obstacle facing the campaign - and one that could not have been avoided. While Sanders's grass-roots fundraising machine gave him a massive financial advantage over Biden, Solomon says it was more than balanced out by the warm treatment the former vice-president received from the press.
"You can't put a monetary value on the so-called free media Biden has gotten this past year," Solomon says. "The corporate media was tremendous trouble for Bernie."
In one particularly fraught moment the day before the Nevada Caucuses, the Washington Post ran an article - based on unnamed sources - alleging that US intelligence officials had informed Sanders that the Russian government was surreptitiously trying to help him to disrupt the Democratic race.
Sanders suggested the Post's timing was meant to damage his campaign, sarcastically calling the paper's reporters "good friends".
Read more on Joe Biden
Progressive split
Another big what-if that will torment the Sanders faithful in the days ahead is whether, while the centrists united, divisions within their own ranks cost them victory.
Elizabeth Warren, the progressive senator from Massachusetts, was probably closest to Sanders ideologically among the Democratic candidates. She dropped out of the race shortly after a string of disappointing finishes on Super Tuesday, but she pointedly declined to endorse Sanders. Instead, she noted that they had much in common from a policy perspective, but some of his supporters were abusive.
Warren and Sanders had exchanged heated words after a contentious February debate in Iowa, and in the days that followed Warren was savaged on social media by Sanders loyalists, who called her a snake and a traitor. While the Sanders camp reportedly made overtures to Warren's staffers around Super Tuesday, they viewed those efforts as too little, too late.
Meanwhile, the Sanders' side sees Warren's cold shoulder as a stinging and costly betrayal.
"They had a fork in the road, and they chose to be silent and do nothing," Solomon said. "By doing nothing, it was an explicit boost to Biden, and that will always be on her record. We're never going to forget that."
Black swans
Some of the pitfalls and obstacles facing the Sanders campaign - such as the struggle to win the support of black voters, critical media coverage, the reluctance of the Democratic establishment and centrists to make peace with the senator, and the negative connotations of his self-proclaimed "Democratic socialist" identity among parts of the electorate - were predictable.
Then there were the unexpected "black swan" events that posed particular challenges to Sanders.
His heart attack in October threatened to derail the entire campaign. Donald Trump's impeachment trial in January kept Sanders tied to Washington, DC for two weeks, while other candidates - particularly Buttigieg - were able to turn repeated trips through Iowa and New Hampshire into growing support.
Finally, the coronavirus outbreak put a Sanders campaign that was already on its heels after a string of defeats into indefinite deep-freeze.
While the chances of a comeback were remote given Biden's lead in national convention delegates after his March wins, state after state delayed their primary contests into June. There was no chance of a surprise victory; no hope of a change in momentum.
And when Wisconsin, a state Sanders won comfortably in 2016, decided to move forward with its vote this week, social distancing and shelter-in-place orders ensured that Sanders was unable to hold his trademark raucous rallies or deploy his millions of door-knocking volunteers even if he wanted to.
The reality was unavoidable, and on Wednesday Sanders acknowledged it.
"As I see the crisis gripping the nation, I cannot in good conscience continue" he said in video broadcast from his home in Vermont. "I wish I could give you better news, but I think you know the truth and that is we are some 300 delegates behind Vice-President Joe Biden and the path toward victory is virtually impossible."
Sanders added that he would remain on the ballot in the remainder of the primaries and hoped to amass more delegates to give him the ability to influence the party's manifesto and rules at the national convention, which has been delayed to August. The active campaign, however, was done.
The road ahead
In his Wednesday concession speech Sanders also struck a hopeful note, saying that although his campaign was coming to an end, the movement he created was not.
"While the path may be slower now, we will change this nation, and with like-minded friends around the globe, change the entire world," he said.
In just five years Sanders created a movement essentially out of thin air. When he kicked off his first presidential bid in April 2015, it was with a sparsely attended press conference on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol. There was little indication at the time of the grass-roots and fundraising juggernaut that would follow.
The politician who had spent decades as back-bencher in Congress transformed himself into the leader of a popular, grass-roots force that electrified supporters and sent traditional party power-brokers scrambling. He became, arguably, the most influential force on the party in recent memory - at the very least on a short list with Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Bill Clinton. And his power came not from the office he held, but from the people he spoke to - and for.
Now the 78-year-old senator is approaching the twilight of his political career, and it seems unlikely he will again try to head the Democratic national ticket. The question, then, becomes who will lead of the movement going forward.
Warren is an obvious choice - if the acrimony of the recent campaign eventually settles. New York Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez is the rising star in the progressive ranks. Her endorsement of the senator shortly after his heart attack is credited with reviving what was at the time a flagging campaign.
Other Sanders advocates - Congressman Ro Khanna of California and Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal of Washington are also seen as young, charismatic figures.
"Bernie is very beloved, and he's going to continue in the Senate and as a public person for many years to come," Solomon said. "But the leadership is going to diversify."
He added that outside of elected officials, the ranks of progressive activists continues to grow, and the movement is creating its own media outlets to counter with what he says is the unfair coverage of the mainstream press.
The bottom line, he concludes, is that Sanders has opened a door for the next generation of liberal grass-roots candidates - ones who might finally win a White House prize that seemed, for at least a few weeks this year, tantalisingly within his reach.
"The Democratic Party establishment still retains a lot of power," Solomon said. "Yet in contrast with four years ago, there's now an understanding from the hierarchy that they can't just tell progressives to go jump in a lake. If they do that, people like Trump win."
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A recent study linked the contraceptive pill with depression. It's the latest supposed side-effect to attract headlines. But poorly interpreted statistics might pose a bigger risk for women, says Elizabeth Cassin. | According to the World Health Organization, more than 100 million women around the world use the combined oral contraceptive - better known as the pill.
Many of its potential side-effects have been well documented since its release in the 1960s. But recently, a study claimed to have established a link between depression and the pill.
Danish researchers looked at the medical records of more than one million women with no prior history of depression aged 15 to 34.
They found that, compared to non-users, those who took the pill were more likely to receive a prescription for anti-depressants at a later stage, or to be diagnosed with depression in a hospital.
The study made headlines around the world. "Are YOU on the Pill? You're more likely to be depressed: Women who use contraception are up to 70 per cent more likely to be on antidepressants," said one newspaper. "The Pill has been linked to depression. Why isn't this more of a scandal?" said another.
However, according to Phil Hannaford, professor of primary care at the University of Aberdeen, it only showed "very small effects, if they are there".
For every 100 women not using the pill, 1.7 each year were given anti-depressants. Whereas for every 100 women using the pill, the figure was only slightly higher at 2.2.
It's not a huge difference, in Hannaford's view. "The difference between those two groups is 0.5, so one per every 200 women-years," he says.
Although this showed a statistical association, it didn't necessarily show a causal link, because there could be other factors at play, he says.
"For instance, the women who are using the pill may have had a breakdown in their relationship with their partner. That could have led to depression and being given an anti-depressant."
This kind of study is good for generating a hypothesis, but not for testing a causal link, Hannaford says.
To do that, he says, you would need a large randomised trial - which is where you take one group and give them the treatment that you suspect might be causing the problem and another group a placebo.
This would be impossible - not to mention unethical - as the women taking the placebo could believe they were covered by birth control and not take other precautions.
Find out more
Depression isn't the only side-effect discussed in relation to the pill.
The rare side-effect which has received the most attention is the risk of blood clots, which are potentially fatal.
But when these risks are poorly understood, there are consequences.
Prof Gerd Gigerenzer, director of the Harding Center for Risk Literacy in Berlin, says "the UK has many traditions, one of them being the contraceptive pill scare. Since the early 1960s, women are alarmed every couple of years that when taking the pill, this can lead to thrombosis - potentially life-threatening blood clots."
In 1995, The UK Committee on the Safety of Medicines issued a warning and held an emergency press conference, to report on a study which showed that the third generation of contraceptive pills increased risk of thrombosis "two-fold".
"Alarm bells rang across the country," says Gigerenzer.
The scare led to some women coming off their contraceptive. And it's been estimated that, in 1996, there were 12,400 additional births and 13,600 additional abortions.
"Here's an instance where lack of statistical literacy - that is to understand the difference between a relative and an absolute risk - leads to emotional reactions, which then in turn do harm to the women themselves," Gigerenzer says.
What, then, are the absolute risks? And how should women try to understand them?
A short film recently published on the Guardian website draws attention to the deaths of young women who died of blood clots while using combined hormonal contraceptives - which include the pill, patch and ring.
The video claims that if women understood the death rate, they would not take hormonal contraceptives - and that if you had 10,000 women who were using the ring, a few of them would die.
"It's not accurate to say that a few women in 10,000 will die," says Dr Sarah Hardman, Deputy Director at the Faculty of Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare.
"It is accurate to say that a few women in 10,000, probably between five and 12 in 10,000 will have clotting events - a vein thrombosis event. But not all of those women die. In fact, only about 1% of the women who have a clotting event die."
"So we're looking at maybe about three to 10 per million women dying as a result of having a clot that is attributable to use of their combined hormonal contraception."
If you're not on a hormonal contraception, and you're a woman of reproductive age, your risk is only about two in 10,000 women per year.
But of course, coming off the pill to avoid blood clots increases your likelihood of getting pregnant. And pregnancy itself increases the risk of blood clots.
"If you're looking at women who are pregnant, it's about 29 per 10,000," says Hardman.
"And women who are in the post-partum period - in the weeks just after they have given birth - their risk is about 300-400 in 10,000."
In other words, having a baby is far more likely to produce blood clots than taking the pill.
And the pill can be very effective in preventing pregnancy. For women, the only methods more effective are IUDs, implants and sterilisation.
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After more than 40 state-wide lockdowns were put in place across the US throughout March and April, many states are now easing restrictions - but some are going against White House guidelines, worrying public health experts. | By Jake HortonBBC Reality Check
Dr Anthony Fauci, the White House's top infectious disease adviser, has said he's concerned some states are opening up too soon and risk triggering "an outbreak that you may not be able to control".
Dr Fauci said: "I've been very clear in my message to try, to the best extent possible, to go by the guidelines that have been very well thought out and very well delineated."
What are the guidelines?
The reopening guidelines laid out by the Trump administration in April propose that states should have a "downward trajectory" of reported cases, or a falling share of positive tests, over a 14-day period before beginning a gradual reopening.
They also say states should have a robust testing programme in place and hospitals shouldn't be overwhelmed.
These are only guidelines and the decision is ultimately down to state governors. President Trump has also repeatedly encouraged states to open up, seemingly going against his administration's guidance.
Since the guidelines were announced on 16 April, more than 30 states have partially reopened.
Have states seen a downward trend in daily cases?
Daily coronavirus cases are increasing in a handful of states, but most are seeing a plateau, with neither a significant rise nor fall in reported daily cases.
Far fewer states are seeing a sustained decline - or a "downward trajectory of documented cases within a 14-day period" as recommended by the White House reopening guidelines.
But as testing expands, the government guidelines allow for an increase in daily cases if there's a decrease in the proportion of positive tests - as more testing is likely to produce more cases overall. But some states didn't meet these criteria before reopening either.
For example, in Missouri, gyms, restaurants, bars, retail stores, hairdressers and theatres reopened with limited capacity on 4 May. This was despite the state's daily coronavirus cases and share of positive tests rising over the previous two weeks.
Kansas also reopened restaurants and retail stores on 4 May without seeing a two-week fall in either daily cases or in the proportion of positive tests.
Many other states saw a rise in daily cases in the two weeks prior to reopening, but are testing more widely so the proportion of positive tests dropped.
For example, in the US's second most populous state, Texas, retail stores, restaurants and theatres reopened with limited capacity on 1 May. This was despite daily coronavirus cases rising over the previous two weeks.
Since then Texas has registered more than 1,000 new daily cases nine times in the first two weeks of May, compared with just once in the last two weeks of April.
Dr Tom Tsai, a public health expert at Harvard University, says that "for lots of states we are in the period where there's a lot of noise - there's no true trajectory because we haven't had a substantial 14-day decrease in cases".
Is there enough testing to reopen?
The White House guidelines call on states to be prepared with a "robust" testing programme, as well as contact tracing capabilities, before reopening.
"Robust" is open to interpretation - the guidelines prioritise healthcare workers, but also recommend having the ability to test all people showing symptoms.
Experts at Harvard University have said 900,000 tests a day are needed in the US to reopen the economy. That's about 275 tests per 100,000 people per day - only nine states are around this level of testing currently.
Many other states which have already begun to reopen fall below that benchmark, such as Georgia, Florida and Colorado.
Dr Fauci says he is concerned that if some areas "jump over those various checkpoints and prematurely open up without having the capability to be able to respond effectively and efficiently" the US could "start to see little spikes that might turn into outbreaks".
President Trump has promised to work with state governors to expand testing, and says he's "confident that we have enough testing to begin reopening and the reopening process".
But medical experts are not so sure, and worry that sufficient testing and tracing capabilities were not in place before many states reopened.
Dr Tsai says: "As you move on to the next stage you need the infrastructure in place - you need the contact tracing programme up and running as well as testing. My worry is that we aren't getting the infrastructure right now while we have a little breathing room."
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With a whir and a click the job is done. In the space of 20 minutes a plastic bottle opener has been constructed by the Replicator - a 3D printing machine capable of making objects up to the size of a loaf of bread. | By Leo KelionTechnology reporter, BBC News, Las Vegas
The device is made by the New York start-up Makerbot Industries and was launched this week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
The newly-created bottle opener feels warm to the touch and has to be prised away from its base.
It has been created by using extrusion technology - a process in which a spindle of plastic thread is unravelled, melted and fed through a print head which draws the object layer by layer - in this case at a rate of 40mm per second.
3D printing is nothing new - engineers and designers have been using it for more than two decades to create prototypes.
What has changed is that the printers are now being pitched at consumers.
Discount designs
The Replicator is being sold for $1,749 (£1,130) for the basic version that makes objects in one colour. An additional $250 buys a two-colour version.
Each spool of plastic sells for about $50 - enough to build a toy castle playset which would cost up to three times the price in a store.
"It's a machine that makes you anything you need," Makerbot's chief executive, Bre Pettis, tells the BBC.
"Handy in an apocalypse or just handy for making shower curtain rings and bathtub plugs.
"We want to get this into the hands of the next generation because kids these days are going to have to learn digital design so they can solve the problems of tomorrow."
Objects can be created on a computer using free online software such as TinkerCAD or Google Sketchup, before being transferred to the Replicator on a SD memory card.
Alternatively other people's designs can be downloaded from Makerbot's community website Thingiverse.
The site follows open source principles - any design uploaded to it must be shared for free.
"We get asked a lot: 'When will I be able to buy objects?' and I think that is a relic of consumerist lifestyles," says Mr Pettis.
"I would like to live in the future where somebody creates a digital design - maybe a great faucet handle - and after that nobody needs to recreate a faucet handle because it's been done. Or maybe if they want to make it a little bit different it or add their initials they can do that.
"But I don't think we need a marketplace. It's a sharing world. We are at the dawn of the age of sharing where even if you try to sell things the world is going to share it anyway."
It is a chilling thought for defenders of intellectual property rights who have already seen piracy take its toll on the music and movie industries.
Printing pioneer
Take a walk to the other side of the convention centre and you will find another plastic printer maker with another new product, but a very different way of thinking.
3D Systems is a North Carolina-based veteran of the business.
"We invented 3D printers," its Israeli-born chief executive Abe Reichental says.
"For 25 years we have taken the classic journey of taking expensive, complex technology and bringing it down in price.
"We have about 1,000 workers worldwide. We are a publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange. We have almost as many patents as employees."
App store
The firm is at CES to publicise the launch of Cube, its first consumer-focused product.
The $1,299 device is smaller than Makerbot's but looks more user-friendly, utilising cartridges rather than spools of plastic thread.
It also boasts its own app store. The launch library includes software to customise belt buckles, a program to turn your voice into a bracelet design, and perhaps most excitingly software from developer Geomagic for Microsoft's Kinect sensor that allows the peripheral to replicate the user's face.
Work is also ongoing on an app to allow owners to use Kinect to sculpt objects by shaping their hands in the air.
Like Makerbot, the firm also offers other people's designs for download. But unlike its New York competitor it offers creators the chance to sell their goods in an online store. Designers keep 60% of the proceeds.
"Our philosophy is that we want to give an economic incentive to anybody to create and make in 3D, and we want to do it in a way that developers can monetise their creative sweat equity in it," Mr Reichental says.
"The bottom line here is that we think democratisation goes hand in hand with monetisation.
"The monetisation here is primarily for the benefit of accelerating adoption.
"We can't come up with all the possibilities and we don't think that the average person will stretch themselves as deep as they can if there wasn't a monetary advantage."
Tie-ups
3D System's booth resembles that of Makerbot in that it is covered with self-made playthings including dinosaurs, planes and chess pieces.
However, unlike Makerbot, 3D System's embrace of capitalism means that it is already in talks with established toy makers and other companies about the potential of selling access to their designs.
For the time being it stresses that the Cube's main purpose is to drive creativity.
"There are so many different ways that people are looking to harness the power of this new communication and expression tool," says Mr Reichental.
"Because that's what this is. It's really not so much about printing as it is about realising and making something real from an idea."
Eco-unfriendly?
3D Systems says it aims to bring the cost of its machine to below $500 over the coming years to drive take-up.
However, the mass adoption of such devices could have consequences for the environment.
While both firms offer corn-based PLA plastic consumables which biodegrade, they also sell ABS plastics - the type used to make Lego - which does not break down unless treated.
A generation of new designers testing and refining their designs conjures up images of mountains of 3D printed waste.
Yet neither boss appears unduly worried by the prospect.
"The amount of plastic we are talking here is not a lot and it is recyclable," says Mr Pettis.
"I would suggest that people focus on innovation and the ability to make whatever they need, and by all means if there are things you can make with the biodegradable ones then do it."
Mr Reichental offers a similar sentiment: "When we look at all the opportunity to improve the quality of life for the betterment of mankind then so long as we apply some discipline then I think it is a good thing."
Moon bases
3D System's more advanced printers can print plastics in determined "a pixel at a time" as well as in metals, nylons, powders and liquids - offering the prospect of a future in which home made devices can replicate any object Star Trek-style.
For the moment Makerbot notes that its Replicator is advanced enough to build most of the components necessary to reproduce itself.
Both firms describe their efforts as having "democratising" effects with the potential to change the world.
"We can put this power of creativity in the hands of kids - imagine how much more powerful when they reach adulthood," says Mr Reichental.
"This may be the last toy that they have to purchase because they can begin to create their own toys and become creative and innovative in their own right."
Mr Pettis' vision is even more radical.
"We're delivering on that dream of the future where you can have anything you want - you can download it on the internet and just have it manufactured in your house," he says.
"It's my goal to put Makerbots on the moon building the moon base for us.
"It's my hope that if an apocalypse happens people will be ready with Makerbots, building the things they can't buy in stores. So we're not just selling a product, we are changing the future."
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Boston bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has been sentenced to death by a federal jury in the US for his part in the attacks on the 2013 marathon. But only a small proportion of those on Death Row are actually executed. | By Charlotte McDonaldBBC News
Between 1973 and the end of 2013, 8,466 people were sentenced to death in the United States, and 1,359 - about one in six - were executed.
"It's a death penalty in name only," says Frank R Baumgartner, a political science professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
He has studied the fate of people on death row and discovered that as of 31 December 2013
Of those who have had their sentences overturned, the Death Penalty Information Center, estimates that 152 have been exonerated.
One conclusion that can be drawn from these figures is that, as Bryan Stevenson, executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, put it on BBC Radio 4 earlier this year: "For every nine people that we have executed in America, we have identified one innocent person on death row."
Some people, of course, have died on death row of natural causes or suicide.
The proportion of people executed varies from state to state. Eighteen out of the 50 states have banned the death penalty, and just this week the state of Nebraska legislature voted in favour of abolishing it.
Of the 32 states where the death penalty remains in force, Baumgartner points out that Virginia executes a higher proportion of those sentenced to death than any other - about 72%.
"They are very strict about limiting appeals to 12 months. If your appeals aren't filed within 12 months, your case will be considered to be final.
"That's the only state to have such rules, and the only state that has more than 50% of cases carried out to execution.
"There are many states where it is extremely rare."
California has executed about 1%.
"They simply don't carry out their executions," Baumgartner says.
But as well as individual states, the federal government can try people, and sentence them, for federal crimes. This is what has happened in the case of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
Although he committed the crimes in Massachusetts - a state without the death penalty - he was convicted and sentenced by a federal court.
But between 1973 and 2013, the federal government has only executed three people out of 71 sentenced to death. There are 56 people awaiting execution.
So the chance of being executed by the federal government is low, says Baumgartner.
Across the world, the number of countries using the death penalty has been in decline, says Prof Carolyn Hoyle, director of the Centre for Criminology at the University of Oxford.
More than half of all countries have officially banned the death penalty, and less than a quarter have used it in the last decade.
"If you look back to 1988 only 35 countries had abolished the death penalty. Today, 107 have abolished the death penalty," she says.
"Another 52 countries haven't executed anyone in the last 10 years, so they retain it on the books, but they are not actively using it."
The UK stopped using the death penalty in 1965, but retained it as a punishment for arson in the Royal Dockyards until 1971, and for treason and piracy with violence until 1998.
Only 39 countries have executed someone in the past decade, most of them in Africa, the Middle East and Asia.
The US has by far the most developed appeals system according to Hoyle. In contrast, some countries have "speedy courts" and limited options for appeal. Some do not allow the accused to take part in the trial and may coerce suspects into making a false confession.
There are no available figures for the number of people in these countries who have been sentenced to death and subsequently had their sentences revoked.
But there is anecdotal evidence of miscarriages of justice, says Hoyle.
"In China, a very high-profile case a few years ago was of a man who was convicted of killing his neighbour. The neighbour wandered back to the village 10 years later alive and well.
"That was a case where not only was he not guilty, there had not actually been a crime."
Listen to More or Less on BBC Radio 4 and the World Service, or download the free podcast.
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A ferry operator is to stop using plastic cups, individual milk portions and sauce sachets to reduce the waste in produces. | Caledonian MacBrayne (CalMac) announced earlier this year it was replacing plastic straws with paper ones on all its sailings.
Replacing the other items with reusable cups, jugs of milk and sauce dispensers is a further step in waste reduction.
CalMac operates Clyde and Hebrides ferry services.
The company's decision on plastic straws followed it signing up to the #NaeStrawAtAw campaign launched by Glasgow's Sunnyside Primary School.
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Non-EU nationals who come to the UK for more than six months could be charged at least £200 a year to access NHS treatment . The government says it wants to crack down on so-called health tourism - people coming to the UK to take advantage of free healthcare - but opinion is divided on how big a problem it really is and whether the plans will actually save money. | Dr Clare Gerada - Chairwoman, Royal College of General Practitioners
I've been a GP for 25 years and certainly there are some who do abuse the system. But on the whole, people who do come into this country are young and don't use the NHS as much as those that live here.
We must make sure that the response is proportionate. What we don't want to do is to put people at risk - not just the migrants but also us. People use the NHS if they've got infections. We don't want people wandering around [with infections] for fear of being charged at the GP surgery.
I don't think we should be turning the GP surgery into a border agency. We should be making sure people that do feel they're ill can come and access us because we don't want people who've got TB or HIV or any infectious disease - or anybody that believes themselves to be ill - to be frightened of seeing a GP.
We need to make sure that what comes out is sensible, proportionate and fair and doesn't cost us all much more money and puts us at much more risk than the current situation.
Paddy Singh - from India, now lives in Salisbury
I am 71 and have been coming to the UK since 1983. In 2006 I got a residency permit and have recently been granted indefinite stay.
I think that anyone of any age that comes to the UK from abroad should contribute money to the NHS and I am all for the government's proposals. It is a small sum to pay each year and takes the weight off genuine taxpayers.
After the age of 50, people start to get ill and normally have to go to see the doctor more frequently than before. Surgeries and hospitals are basically writing a blank cheque for patients that come from abroad.
The NHS has been taken for a ride.
Dr Rob Barnett - GP in Liverpool
We're going to have to undertake more checks on people. I haven't got the staff to do this. We're going to need more people, perhaps even more space, to be able to do it, and it's going to put a delay in the process.
We've got to be proportionate. If it costs £60m to recoup £30m, you've got to ask whether it's worthwhile.
From a taxpayers' point of view, clearly we don't want to be throwing money away. But I don't want to put bars in front of patients to stop them coming to see me.
There are some who do actually want to pay and find it hard to believe that they're coming here and they're not paying for anything.
Liz Kendall MP - Shadow minister for care and older people
If people have infectious diseases and don't end up going to a GP and that infection spreads, or people end up going to A and E, which costs more, it would be bad for patients as well as taxpayers.
We need a balanced debate about this and not overblown rhetoric.
We have three key tests. Can it be effectively policed? Will it save more money than it costs? And does it protects the public's health?
If you could have an upfront system so that the money is there and you don't have to end up going through a big process of trying to get the money back, we should look at that.
Dr Ellie Cannon - GP in London
We already have a system in place to check whether patients are in the right catchment area and, if not, they're asked to leave and find a new practice. I don't see why it would be any different for health tourists.
Of course it's only human to treat people in need of emergency care - I'd treat someone in the street - but we're talking about those who are actively seeking out obstetric care or other kinds of treatment.
It's all well and good being liberal and caring and saying "we'll treat anyone" but we have to make cost-savings where we can so the NHS is there for everybody.
I've been asked for prescriptions by people who live abroad or who are visiting for a few months. Yes, it's a drop in the ocean of the NHS budget, but on the other hand we've got to look at all the safe areas we can in order to save money.
Saira Grant - Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants
What this means is failed asylum seekers, trafficked individuals, migrants whose status hasn't been resolved through no fault of their own will no longer be able to access GP services.
This will mean that part of our population that is already destitute and already can't work, will now no longer have access to medical services - and really this is going to put the burden on the A and E departments.
Melissa Wilson Craw - An American living in London
It's fair to say I have taken advantage of the services offered by the NHS. It is also fair to say, however, that during my six years of employment here, I have made all of my National Insurance contributions, just like everyone else who works and lives here.
I firmly believe in the NHS, and I can guarantee that it is one of the best healthcare systems in the world.
I am happy to pay my NI contributions. What I am not happy to do is be charged between £578 to £1,426 just to get a visa to stay with my husband in this country, then a further £200 per year for access to healthcare when I still pay all my NI contributions.
Inger den Haan - Immigration adviser
I am a very experienced immigration adviser and have dealt with many cases where immigrants have needed medical care.
The proposals are very misleading and there seems to be a lot of propaganda. There seems to be the suggestion that it is very easy to come to the UK and use the NHS, but that isn't the case.
There are some types of visas, such as medical visas, where people come here for medical treatment but they pay for everything themselves.
The people that have access to free NHS services are those who come to study or live with their families. They already pay thousands of pounds in fees or sponsorship to come over here.
The government has mentioned HIV and TB. It is overlooking the fact that free treatment for TB and HIV are in the wider public health interest as migrants will not seek treatment for TB if they cannot afford it, potentially spreading TB further, which is big a concern for the NHS.
Janet Davies - Royal College of Nursing
We agree that the NHS should use its limited resources appropriately. We welcome the commitment to develop more robust data on the numbers and types of non-EU patients and care sought to ensure any future action is evidence-based.
We need much more information from the government on how this proposed scheme would work in practice and what pressures it will put on an already overstretched workforce. We are reviewing the details of the consultation and will be considering the implications for nursing, for patients, and for public health.
We would caution against nurses having to act as gatekeepers to NHS services when their job, first and foremost, is to provide essential care to the sick and vulnerable.
Matt Tee - NHS Confederation
We are pleased the government has indicated it plans to work with GPs and other medical professionals to improve the way chargeable patients are identified.
Eligibility for NHS care is something for the government to determine. But it is hugely important that once eligibility criteria has been set, the practicalities of identifying who meets the criteria should not impose a burden on front-line staff or cut across the fundamental professional values of our clinicians.
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A project to restore a 12th Century former school in Coventry and incorporate it into a museum has been given a £4.6m lottery grant. | Coventry Transport Museum said the Grade I listed Old Grammar School was to be turned into an exhibition, event and education centre.
The money would also improve existing museum facilities, it said.
Work on the school, which it said had been unused for 30 years, is due to be completed by April 2015.
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Greater Manchester is to get an elected mayor, George Osborne has announced. There have been numerous calls for greater decentralisation of power within England in the wake of the Scottish referendum. Could more elected mayors be the answer? | By Vanessa BarfordBBC News
Ask a dozen people to name a mayor in England and most will come up with London Mayor Boris Johnson.
The charismatic blond-haired Old Etonian, who combines the gravitas of his role with an unkempt, humorous, almost "bumbling Boris" persona, certainly knows how to get publicity.
But Mr Johnson is one of 16 directly elected mayors in England. Not many others have a national presence.
Advocates of the mayor model of further devolution say that's not the point. Mayors are meant to be local champions. The important thing is whether people in their community know their name and what they do.
On Monday, Chancellor George Osborne announced that Greater Manchester is getting an elected mayor to preside over regional issues. He has also indicated that Birmingham could get one.
But mayors haven't been popular recently. In 2012, nine out of 10 cities - including Manchester - rejected the idea of replacing local council cabinets with directly elected mayors in referendums.
So are mayors suddenly back in fashion?
The first thing to point out is that not all mayors are the same.
Many councils have a civic mayor. They carry out ceremonial duties and chair meetings, but can't make decisions about council business.
Directly elected mayors were first introduced to England and Wales by the Local Government Act 2000. The mayor of London was the first - created as the executive of the Greater London Authority, with responsibility for the strategic direction of transport, policing and economic development in the capital.
Unlike the London mayor, the other 15 authorities that have adopted the "mayor and cabinet" model - as opposed to "leader and cabinet" or the "committee system" - haven't got any more powers than non-mayoral local authorities.
Greater Manchester's "metro-wide mayor", like London's, would. The new mayor will oversee policies such as transport, social care and housing as well as police budgets in the area's 10 local authorities - hence the focus on Greater Manchester rather than just the City of Manchester.
The shift to extra powers and to entire urban conurbations creates a different mayoral proposition. But it still involves a mayor at the helm.
So could more directly elected mayors with further reach be the way forward?
Stand outside Bristol City Hall, home to the only mayor that was voted for in the 2012 referendums, and most residents have some idea who does the job.
"It's George - people refer to him as 'the man with the red trousers'," says 63-year-old retired nurse Kate Thornton. "It's Bristol red pants," echoes 72-year-old Sally Harvey.
Bristol mayor George Ferguson was elected on a 28% turnout, not much higher than the 24% turnout at the referendum, when the introduction of a mayor was backed by a margin of 53% to 47%.
Some residents, like Mrs Harvey, were outraged a mayor was elected by so few people. "I destroyed my paper - I've never destroyed a paper before," she says.
However, others welcomed the move. "I voted for a mayor and for George Ferguson. I felt Bristol was paralysed in terms of city planning and thought a mayor would enable more radical decisions and help put Bristol higher up the national agenda," says 41-year-old accountant Louise Wellesley.
Independent Bristol Mayor George Ferguson didn't respond to attempts to ask him about the difference he felt a mayor had made to Bristol.
The council website cites winning the title of European Green Capital for 2015, moving Bristol closer to having a 12,000 capacity arena, upgrading the MetroBus scheme and tackling congestion, road safety and parking problems as among the city's achievements.
The verdict on the streets outside the mayor's office is more mixed.
Sarah Hickey, 24, says the move to "make Sundays special" by freeing the city centre of traffic once a month and putting on community cultural and leisure events stands out as a success.
She says the city's residential parking schemes, and a new 20mph limit for many city streets, have been less popular. "Some people have put posters in the window opposing them."
Although Ms Hickey didn't vote for a mayor in 2012, she says she would vote for one now. "Anything that encourages young people to engage with governance is a good idea," she says.
Mrs Thornton, who did vote in 2012, says she'd vote again. "A mayor is good for a city - it's someone visible that people can turn to," she says.
However, not everyone agrees. Jade Stadman, 25, has lived in Bristol all her life. She didn't vote for a mayor, and she wouldn't vote for one in the future. "I don't see any changes in Bristol and don't like the idea of a single person making rules - it should be about communities," she says.
Others, like university language tutor Steve Gillway, 50, simply don't think Bristol needs one.
Nevertheless, the momentum for mayors seems to be gaining pace.
Last month, right-leaning think tank ResPublica recommended Manchester should "lead the way" on devolution for cities, with an elected mayor, assembly, income-tax raising powers and complete control of spending within five years.
The RSA City Growth Commission published a report in October that recommended allowing UK cities to make their own decisions on tax and spending to boost economic growth.
At the time, Mr Ferguson said he welcomed the report and that Bristol was "extremely well-placed to take on greater powers". He welcomed closer working with the wider city region and Cardiff.
On Wednesday, Mayor of Liverpool Joe Anderson said Merseyside needed to have an elected mayor to "make a real difference" to the people of the region and he would be interested in running for the role.
He told the BBC mayors brought "a new focus previously lacking locally, nationally and internationally" to cities and wider urban conurbations.
"Having a directly elected mayor has put Liverpool firmly on the front foot - long-term challenges of economic and population decline have been overcome and the city has transformed its infrastructure, its appearance and its image - and it can work for other cities too.
"The city has a grasp on its future like never before. The people have greater involvement in the decisions that affect their lives - the very definition of democracy. But this can only work if we get are more resources and more powers. Politicians elected locally are better placed to make decisions about the places they govern," he said.
Of course there will always be those who give the idea of mayors short shrift.
And some mayors have had more bad press than others.
The government said a recent report into Tower Hamlets Council in London - where directly elected mayor Lutfur Rahman is at the helm - reveals a "culture of cronyism". Mr Rahman has denied all allegations of electoral malpractice.
But now, more than ever, it seems a mayor could be coming to a city or region near you.
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For anyone whose A-level results have fallen short this year, we have experts on hand to answer your questions. | Eddie Playfair, a senior curriculum expert at the Association of Colleges, and Which? University editor Helena Poole offer personalised advice on what to do if your grades are not what you were hoping for.
Your questions answered
I didn't get into the economics degree course I wanted, but they have offered me a foundation year. I don't know if it's worth taking it or going straight to a apprenticeship elsewhere and starting work?
If you're really set on the economics degree, the foundation year would be a good way to build your skills and knowledge to make a real success of the degree course a year later.
It also means you would get into university study habits, get to know your lecturers and get to grips with the expectations of the degree course.
However, this is an extra year of study and the work option, if you get a job. would mean you'd be earning a wage immediately.
If you're lucky enough to get an apprenticeship in the sector you're interested in, you could get your feet on to the career ladder while also keeping the potential open of a higher level apprenticeship linked to a university.
I think ultimately your decision should depend on whether you're most enthused by the idea of study or work at this stage in your life - and also the jobs market of course!
Eddie
It's definitely worth checking what the chances are of you continuing at that same university for your undergraduate degree course after the foundation year. Ask them how many foundation year students have gone on to do this. Is it seen favourably?
A foundation year is a worthwhile option if you're slightly on the fence about studying that particular subject. You may find after a year that you want to do something (a little or completely) different.
If you're really keen to get cracking on that economics degree, use our search tool to look in clearing to see what economics courses there are that match up with your achieved grades.
A degree apprenticeship is an excellent alternative to traditional university study, combining lectures with employment in an actual company/organisation. Plus, your tuition fees are paid for by your employer and you earn a small salary, plus practical experience.
However, you'll need to look around to see what degree apprenticeship opportunities are out there. Also bear in mind that, unlike university applications, apprenticeship applications open and close at different times of year.
Helena
My daughter had an offer from Nottingham to read biology. She's got a C in this and Nottingham have revised the offer to say she can take the course.
She doesn't really want to take biology now as she has a relatively low grade. Is it possible to see what other courses are available before accepting or rejecting the Nottingham offer?
If your daughter has definitely changed her mind about studying biology, then she can decline the offer she is holding from Nottingham and maybe also her insurance offer and go into clearing in the hope of finding a course she does want.
The risk with that is she may not find something that really motivates her and she may then want to consider re-taking or pursuing other options.
Her starting point is to reflect on what it is that really enthuses her and what she thinks she would like to be studying for the next three years.
Eddie
It's great the university has revised the entry requirements and offered your daughter a place but it also sounds like her results have knocked her confidence. She should certainly search the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (Ucas) for courses still available, before declining her current offer.
She can call other universities with vacancies but they might ask for her clearing number. Your daughter will need to decline her offers to get this.
Is biology a subject she enjoys and would be excited to spend three years studying? If so, she might consider accepting the offer - but if not, it's certainly worth weighing up other options (of which there are many).
Did she do relatively well in her other subjects? If so, switching courses at Nottingham (where she already has an offer) to do a joint honours degree with another subject could be an option.
But perhaps your daughter's grades have confirmed a niggling feeling that biology isn't something she wants to pursue.
If she really wants to go to university this year, she can use our A-level Explorer to see what other degree subjects she could potentially study, based on her A-level subjects.
It could also be worth her taking some time out to reconsider what she really wants to do. Taking a gap year to get some work experience or travel can be looked upon favourably by universities and having "known grades" could also put your daughter in a strong position for next September.
Helena
Chiara, Berkshire
I have secured a place at my second-choice uni but am very disappointed with my A-level English result. I predicted my other grades accurately but was expecting an A or a high B, based on my previous work and feeling on how the exams went, but got a C and only 17 [out of ] 40 on my strongest paper. I am thinking of asking for re-marks. I want to understand what went wrong rather than go for a higher grade but is it worth it?
You're wise to query your mark, especially if it was significantly lower than expected - this can help you in your future career. Talk to your teachers or head of year at school to get their thoughts, given that they know you best from an academic point of view.
However if you're happy to go with your second-choice university, I wouldn't worry too much about querying this right away. Other students who are appealing grades because they have a uni place on the line will probably appreciate it.
Check out our guide to appealing an A-level grade.
Helena
Hi Chiara,
You can apply to the exam board to have a review of results, which can be either a review of marking or a clerical check, but you should discuss this with your college or school first to make sure they support your view that the result is unexpected.
They may also be able to get more information about where you lost marks in your paper. Bear in mind that with a review of marking, your grade can go down as well as up and there is also a charge, although this is refunded if there is a grade change.
In the meantime, if you are planning to progress to higher education, you need to do so on the basis of the grades you've actually been awarded. Good luck with whatever you decide.
Eddie
Shelley,
Hi, Shelley here - in a very tense household where [my] son has just got his results: A* in maths, A in philosophy, B in further maths.
He has apparently lost his offer at Durham, who require three As. My question is: Is there any possibility of Durham still taking him with these grades?
It is quite possible that Durham could still offer him a place as he's very close with one subject above and one below the offer. They may need a little time to see where they are with their numbers.
If they say categorically: "No", then he should be guaranteed a place at his insurance university, assuming he has met their offer grades - fingers crossed that he gets the place he most wants.
Eddie
Your son is doing the right thing by calling up his first choice to see whether they can still honour the offer. Hopefully they can - but if they can't, there are still plenty of options open to him.
He can choose his insurance choice or ask his school about the possibility of retaking the further maths A-level and re-applying again next next year.
I understand this must be disappointing but A*AB are still fantastic grades, so I have no doubt he will find himself on a course that he loves.
Helena
I got an offer of ABB for sociology at Birmingham but declined and chose my firm and insurance offers elsewhere.
Today, I received ABC, with an A in sociology, and saw that the University of Birmingham had places for sociology in clearing. However, although on their website they state the "typical" (not in clearing) offer is ABB, they have put the clearing grades up to A*AA. They said they could not offer a place for ABC, although one grade below their "typical offer", and also stated they would not be lowering the A*AA requirement in clearing. What can I do?
Well done on your results. I'm sorry to hear that the university you'd like to go to can't offer you a place.
Have your firm or insurance choices offered you a place? If they have and you no longer want to go there, you need to be released to enter clearing.
If you haven't been offered a place or you have chosen to decline your offers, you might want to look at other universities offering sociology in clearing - were there any in your Ucas top five that you might want to revisit?
Taking a quick glance at the clearing vacancies suggests that a number of universities have places (including ones in Birmingham) available for this subject. You could also consider doing a joint honours degree with sociology and another subject you enjoy. Universities might be more flexible on their entry grades when it comes to joint courses.
Do some research and try calling more universities to suss out what your options are. We hope you find a course at a university that will make you happy.
Helena
Hi and well done for getting ABC. That's a really good set of results.
It does seem harsh for Birmingham to be ramping up the entry requirements like this during clearing.
You haven't said whether you've met the offer requirements for either your firm or insurance places - but if Birmingham are saying that they can't offer you a place through clearing based on your grades, it would be wise not to decline any other offers you are holding on to. Good luck in finding a suitable degree course.
Eddie
Sally, Dorset
My son applied to study product design at Brunel University but his results weren't good enough for his original offer.
So, I was wondering if he could still apply to them through clearing, even though he has just been rejected by the main Ucas system because of his results.
We would suggest that your son calls the university in question to discuss his situation. For instance, if he narrowly missed his grades, they may be able to offer alternatives such as a place on a similar course that still has spots.
However if they've already rejected him, it might be worth spending this time looking at courses at unis that do match up with the grades he's achieved. He can search for courses quickly by entry grades on Which? University.
Helena
Hi Sally,
There may be a completely different course at the same university that has places and could offer him one - but he would need to speak to the university concerned.
Eddie
My son is very down. He only achieved C (business) C (history) E (maths) and he does not think any university will take him with these grades and we are worried that he won't get an apprenticeship with these grades either. Are we right to be worried? What should we do?
As cliched as it sounds, he really does have so many options still open to him. It's most definitely not "The End", even if it might feel like that.
It's worth him taking a look on Which? University to see what courses are still available that match up with his achieved grades.
If there were mitigating circumstances that may account for underperforming in his exams, it might be worth mentioning it to a university on a clearing call, so they're aware of the full picture. And if these grades were much lower than predicted, it could also be worth appealing.
A university may suggest alternative courses or even a foundation year before progressing on to an undergraduate degree course.
Another option would be to speak to his school or college about resitting to boost his grades and re-applying next year.
Regarding degree apprenticeships, yes these can be competitive but applications take place all year round, so he'll have a little more time to assess his options.
Have a look at Ucas's apprenticeship search tool to see what's available now. This should give you some idea of whether an apprenticeship will be feasible with his current grades.
Helena
Your son has passed all three of his A-levels and this is really not a bad set of results and he has a range of options available to him.
He mustn't feel pressurised to make any snap decisions but spend a bit of time reflecting on what he most wants to do.
There should be options for him within clearing and he can also investigate job or apprenticeship options in the field he is interested in but these are not always easy to come by.
A conversation with a careers adviser at his college or school would be a good starting point and he can explore his options without making any irreversible commitments on the spot.
Eddie
My son has just received his A-level results and they are not what he needed to get into the university of his choice. With a C in economics and business and a D in maths, what are his options if he wants to study economics or accounting at university?"
CCD is a very creditable set of results and if he is in clearing, your son will be able to see what degree courses are available in economics or accounting and research the choices available.
Eddie
Your son shouldn't lose hope just yet. Get him to use our search tool to look for economics and accounting courses that meet his entry grades,
He can also consider resitting if he really can't find a uni place based on his current grades.
Helena
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It is estimated that 12,000 men and 85,000 women on average are raped in England and Wales every year, but it is not an issue that is talked about openly. One woman has waived her anonymity and bravely spoken about her story, from reporting the attack to bringing her rapist to justice. | "My identity isn't 'I got raped', it's not. I am Juliet, but I'm forever altered."
Juliet was attacked and raped by a stranger in an alleyway after leaving a bar in Manchester on New Year's Eve 2011. It has changed her life.
"One event and your life isn't ordinary any more," says Juliet. "I don't know, maybe you become extraordinary because you survived it, that would be a good way to put it, and maybe that's how I'm managing to cope now."
She had gone to the bar in Manchester city centre alone as a friend had not shown up and sat on a bar stool drinking, but after consuming a shot of alcohol suddenly felt very drunk and was escorted outside by the door staff.
CCTV footage captured Juliet outside the bar at almost midnight, but she then disappeared out of shot and is only seen again two hours later, staggering from a nearby alleyway.
There were no witnesses to the assault that took place during this time and she has vague memories but no recollection of the entire attack.
As New Year's Day wore on, Juliet started to realise what had happened after she began to feel pain. She rang the police who referred her to St Mary's Sexual Assault Referral Centre in Manchester, one of 46 specialist centres in the UK offering support, counselling and care to rape victims, as well as gathering forensic evidence to help secure a conviction.
It can take a long time from the moment a sex offence occurs to reaching a verdict in court, and many victims drop out before the trial. St Mary's aims to support them throughout the process.
Stigma
Bernie Ryan, the centre's manager, says rape is still considered a taboo issue in society.
"We're all frightened by this type of crime," says Ryan. "We're all frightened about the stigma that it attracts and what people will say, and I think we need to get over that fear and talk about it openly."
Not having a bath, shower or wash after an assault is extremely difficult but considered better for collecting forensic evidence.
Juliet was seen by a forensic doctor and a crisis worker, part of the all-female team at St Mary's.
"They said that however difficult it was going to be for me, that she would be as gentle as she possibly could, but she did need to get the evidence and she said you know at any point you can stop and have a breather.
"A far cry from the old days, where you'd have a male doctor examining you, probably in a police station somewhere. That to me would be horrifying."
DNA samples were taken and Juliet was examined. The medical team found bruises and abrasions on her body and the swabs were found to contain semen, proving someone had sexual intercourse with her without her knowledge.
On 3 January 2012, she went to the police station where her version of events was filmed and recorded on a DVD to be used in a future trial.
Rape by a stranger is rare and it is estimated that 90% of rape victims know their attacker, who could be a partner, ex-partner, relation, friend or colleague.
'You feel stained'
The attack on Juliet was investigated by detectives in Greater Manchester Police's serious sexual offences unit. They had a breakthrough when they discovered a "DNA hit" - DNA from Juliet's swabs matched that of a 20-year-old male called Mustafa Yussuf.
He was brought in for questioning and after refusing to comment at first, later claimed that the sex was consensual and he had been drunk. However, CCTV footage of Yussuf at 23:57 on the night in question established he did not appear to be intoxicated at the time of the attack.
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) is responsible for determining if there is enough evidence for a rape case to go to court and Alison Mutch from the Greater Manchester CPS says CCTV footage showed Juliet had been too drunk at the time to have consented to sex and so the case proceeded.
She said it was important for the victim not to blame themselves for having drunk alcohol.
"If you had a burglary trial you wouldn't blame the victim of burglary because they'd left their front door unlocked when they went to bed," says Mutch. "You wouldn't say, 'Oh well they deserved to be burgled' would you… well I hope not, and acquit as a result."
Statistics have shown that many victims do not report attacks to the police. According to figures taken from the Crime Survey for England and Wales and published in an overview of sexual offending by the Office for National Statistics, the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice in January 2013, there are around 473,000 adult victims of sex offences every year.
Yet only 53,700 sex offences were recorded as crimes by police in 2011-12 and an average of 5,620 offenders convicted.
In 2012/13 there were 3,692 prosecutions for rape, resulting in 2,333 convictions, and the study indicates that when a rape case does get to court, about 62% of cases ended in a conviction, but about 38% of trials result in a not guilty verdict.
"It's not that the jury haven't believed the victim, it's that they haven't been sure beyond reasonable doubt that the defendant is guilty," says Mutch, "and this perception that somehow all these acquittals must mean they've been false allegations of rape just isn't right."
The psychological impact the attack had on Juliet was traumatic.
"I couldn't even get to the shops without freaking out and running home," says Juliet, "because you feel stained, you feel contaminated, you feel like everything you touch is going to be soiled with what has happened to you."
Six months after the assault took place Juliet gave evidence behind a screen at the trial and was accompanied by Gail Morgan, an independent sexual violence adviser at St Mary's, who had supported her at the centre throughout the investigation.
"It was probably the most challenging thing I've ever done in my life, the most scary, but not by far as frightening as what I thought it was going to be," says Juliet.
Yussuf was found guilty of rape, sentenced to seven years and nine months in prison and put on the sex offenders register.
After the court case was over Juliet visited the police station to pick up the shoes she was wearing at the time of the attack. They had been held as part of the investigation and the police were surprised that she wanted to keep them.
"What was weird was the reaction I got from the police when I said, 'Well, I want them back,'" says Juliet. "I said, 'They're my beautiful, lovely, expensive shoes, and my shoes didn't rape me, I want them back.'"
With rape, control is taken away from the victim, but putting on her shoes again means Juliet can start walking towards the future.
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The Rector of Trinity will be Jersey's Acting Anglican Dean for the next three months. | The Reverend Canon Geoff Houghton will be deputising for the Very Reverend Bob Key as head of the island's Anglican Church.
Mr Key will be on sabbatical until April.
Mr Houghton has been given permission to lead prayers in The States of Jersey but will not be able to join any debate.
The Dean of Jersey has a seat in the States of Jersey as a non-voting member.
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Police have named a 23-year-old motorcyclist who died in a crash involving a 4x4 vehicle in Denbighshire. | Daniel Williams, from Ruthin, was involved in a crash on the A494 between Gwyddelwern and Bryn Saith Marchog, near Corwen, at 15:35 BST on Saturday.
He was pronounced dead at the scene, while the people in the 4x4 were said to be shocked but uninjured.
North Wales Police have appealed for information about the incident.
They want to hear from witnesses who saw the white and blue Suzuki bike shortly before the crash with a Jeep Wrangler.
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On the face of it Angela Merkel has pulled off the compromise of her career.
She has quelled the mutiny that threatened to destroy her coalition government. And, it seems, pacified her rebellious interior minister, who was still raging as he went into last-ditch emergency talks last night. | By Jenny HillBBC Berlin correspondent
Horst Seehofer, who also leads Mrs Merkel's Bavarian coalition partners, had snarled that he wasn't going to be thrown out by the woman he had put in power.
Later in the night he emerged beaming and triumphant to announce they had cut a deal.
But this is no victory for Angela Merkel.
The row, and the subsequent solution, have exposed the frailty of her position and may surprise those who still venerate the German chancellor as a defender of liberal values and open borders.
Why the political crisis?
The number of people seeking asylum in Germany has fallen sharply since the refugee crisis of 2015.
Yet the row that has dominated Mrs Merkel's every waking hour for weeks now has focused not on the integration of the million or so people who are already trying to make new lives in Germany, but on the rather quiet border itself.
More specifically, on what to do with the relatively small number of people who arrive there, having already registered or sought asylum in another EU country first.
The deal announced late on Monday night is short on detail, but Mrs Merkel appears to have reincarnated an idea raised during her previous administration: transit centres that are located inside the German border but, much like airports, are not technically on German soil.
From here migrants can be repatriated to the EU country where they first arrived.
The compromise only works if a bilateral agreement exists with those countries. If there isn't one, then - the leaders agreed - people will simply be turned away at the Austrian border, subject to an agreement with the Austrian government.
Is the crisis over?
The Austrian government does not seem terribly impressed with the solution and has, in turn, announced plans to "protect" Austria's southern border.
And it won't be long before the infighting breaks out again in Germany's troubled coalition.
Mrs Merkel is gambling on her centre-left partner, the Social Democrat SPD, accepting the deal - although they have opposed such transit centres in the past.
More from Jenny:
Last night the party leaders reacted relatively calmly.
Because if one thing trumps an illiberal migration policy for the SPD, it is the terrifying spectre of fresh elections. The SPD leadership cannot afford to let the coalition collapse. But its youth wing, which never wanted this alliance, is furious. As are some of its MPs.
It's tempting to wonder why Mrs Merkel did not just accept Mr Seehofer's initial offer of resignation last night.
She must have been itching to sack him ever since his first threat two weeks ago to act alone and start turning people away at the border. After all, she had the support of her party leadership and polls suggest that the majority of Germans prefer her European solution to his unilateral one.
But reports suggest that the mood among some of her MPs has soured. They are worried.
It's not just in pre-election Bavaria that anti-migrant rhetoric has borne fruit.
When the leaders of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) crowed on Tuesday that they were "hunting the union, driving it before us" they were not entirely wrong in claiming triumph over the CDU and CSU.
Mrs Merkel has failed to achieve her original dream - a Europe that would truly share the responsibility for sheltering asylum seekers.
At last week's summit of EU leaders she thrashed out a much tougher policy, working alongside populist governments and other leaders who cherish national interests above those of the European Union.
Exhausted and embattled, Angela Merkel is having to adapt to a changed Europe.
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On 1 6 January, Ahmed Hussein-Suale, a Ghanaian investigative journalist who had collaborated with the BBC, was shot dead near his family home in Accra. Ghanaian police believe he was assassinated because of his work. | By Joel GunterBBC Africa Eye
At first the gunshots sounded like firecrackers, and Unus Alhassan wondered why someone was setting off firecrackers so long after Christmas.
It was nearly midnight in Madina, a suburb of the Ghanaian capital Accra. Alhassan's family was sitting together talking outside the family home, as they often did late into the night. His brother, Ahmed Hussein-Suale, had just left to check on a nephew who was sick. When the sounds of the firecrackers stopped, and the ordinary noise of the neighbourhood settled, Alhassan turned his attention back to his family and he didn't think about the sounds again until a man came running towards him crying out that his brother was dead.
A hundred metres down the road, Hussein-Suale, who was 31, lay slumped in the driver's seat of his dusty blue BMW with bullet holes in his chest and neck. Eyewitnesses said he was killed by two men who fired at the car from close range as it slowed for a junction. The first bullet hit Hussein-Suale in the neck and the car accelerated, crashing into a storefront. One of the gunmen calmly approached the driver's side and fired two shots through the broken window directly into Hussein-Suale's chest. Then he turned to those watching, smiled, and raised a finger to his lips.
Three witnesses to the crime who live nearby told the BBC they saw the men hanging around the junction on several occasions in the week before the killing - two unfamiliar faces in a familiar neighbourhood. The men, one tall and well-built, the other short and wiry, leant on their motorbike or chatted with neighbours to pass the time. They bought alcohol from a shop and helped a man carry pails of water. One neighbour said they seemed suspicious. Another said she thought they were robbers.
But nothing was stolen from Hussein-Suale and no-one close to him believes he was a random target. He was an investigative journalist whose undercover reporting had exposed traffickers, murderers, corrupt officials and high-court judges. He worked with Tiger Eye, a highly secretive team led by one of the most famous undercover journalists in Africa, Anas Aremeyaw Anas. In Ghana and beyond, the team's daring, anonymous reporting made them modern-day folk heroes. And it made them enemies.
When Tiger Eye aired its latest investigation, which exposed widespread corruption in African football, Ghanaian MP Kennedy Agyapong began a campaign of hostility against the team, saying he was offended by its undercover methods. He called publicly for Anas to be hanged. Weeks after the film was screened, in June last year, he used his own TV station to attack Hussein-Suale and expose the journalist's most closely guarded secret - his face.
"That's him," said Agyapong, as images of Hussein-Suale appeared on screen. "His other picture is there as well, make it big."
Agyapong revealed Hussein-Suale's name and the neighbourhood he lived in. "If you meet him somewhere, slap him… beat him," he said. "Whatever happens, I'll pay."
No-one expected the first recorded murder of a journalist in 2019 to happen in Ghana.
Across much of Africa, authoritarian regimes have effectively suffocated the free press. But in a handful of less-repressive countries, tenacious young journalists are holding the powerful to account and advancing a culture of investigative reporting. Ghana is top of this list. Last year the country was ranked first in Africa on the annual Reporters Without Borders press freedom index. Globally it ranked 23rd out of 180 countries - well ahead of the UK (40th) and the US (45th).
Anas and his team are the nation's most high-profile reporters. Anas has been praised by the country's president, Nana Akufo-Addo and by President Barack Obama, who said he saw the spirit of democracy "in courageous journalists like Anas Aremeyaw Anas, who risked his life to report the truth". In his 20 years of undercover journalism, Anas has posed as a female investor in high heels and lipstick; worked as a janitor in a brothel; got himself sent to prison; and hidden inside a fake rock at the side of the road. In public appearances, he wears a striking disguise - a hat with a multicoloured veil of beads that hangs in front of his face. In Ghana it has become a symbol of resistance to corruption that is graffitied on walls around the capital.
But behind the mask there is not just Anas's face. There is a team of highly skilled investigative journalists that put their lives at risk to report stories, and Hussein-Suale was chief among them - Anas's chosen team leader.
Hussein-Suale grew up among eight siblings in Wulensi, a small town in northern Ghana, where he stood out for his fierce interest in politics. At 18 he moved to Accra to study political science at the University of Ghana, where he first met Anas.
Anas had already made a name for himself as an undercover reporter and Tiger Eye was a fledgling team. Hussein-Suale sought him out the same way several early Tiger Eye employees had, by asking around until someone could tell him: that is the man known as Anas. Anas responded the way he did to all potential recruits - he set him a test: travel to Tema, north of Accra, and report a story there about cocaine. Hussein-Suale went to Tema and promptly failed. He blew his cover and got himself arrested. "He did not perform to my expectation," said Anas, in an interview with the BBC last week. "And that was that."
But Hussein-Suale wrote Anas a long letter explaining why he should be given another chance. "So I gave him another chance," said Anas. "And from that day he excelled from one investigation to the next."
Hussein-Suale's first big story came in 2013 when he travelled with Anas to northern Ghana to expose witchdoctors behind the poisoning of children - often children with disabilities - believed to be possessed by evil spirits. In an elaborate sting typical of Tiger Eye's style, the team arranged for the witchdoctor's "concoction men" to visit a family home with a supposedly possessed child. While the concoction men were outside cooking their poison, the team swapped the infant for a prosthetic baby. When the men returned and took hold of the fake baby, police swooped.
The film - Spirit Child - aired internationally on Al Jazeera. Hussein-Suale, then 24, impressed Anas with his pragmatism, not hesitating when it came to entering the witchdoctor's shrine. "The average African is spiritually afraid of traditions and gods," Anas said. "But Ahmed was always bold."
His natural demeanour was the opposite. He was quiet and unassuming, to a fault. "You would be likely to disregard him at first," said Sammy Darko, Tiger Eye's lawyer, "but that made him a good fit for investigative journalism." He was also scrupulously attentive and diligent. He became known as the "encyclopaedia of the team" for his detailed knowledge of each project, and later as "spiritual leader" for his habit of leading a prayer before undercover operations.
His cubicle at Tiger Eye's offices had notes and documents from various investigations piled on the desk and pasted on the walls. "He would go out quietly and do a lot of background work," said a fellow investigator, "so that when we came on to the story we knew exactly what we were doing." But he also had a playful streak. "I got annoyed with him once," recalled Seamus Mirodan, the director of Spirit Child. "One of the villagers gave him a just-slaughtered guinea fowl as a gift. He put it in my tripod bag and it just shat itself all over the inside of the bag."
In 2015, Hussein-Suale took the lead on a story that would rock Ghana and propel Tiger Eye into the national spotlight. "Ghana in the Eyes of God" - a three-hour undercover epic based on hundreds of hours of secret filming - exposed widespread corruption in Ghana's judiciary, showing judges and court workers accepting bribes to influence cases. More than 30 judges and 170 judicial officers were implicated. Seven of the nation's 12 high-court judges were suspended. The film played to 6,500 people in four showings at the Accra International Conference Centre and brought gridlock to the streets of the capital.
For all Tiger Eye's fans, not everybody appreciated the team's methods. They faced accusations of entrapment. "It is wrong to induce somebody by an enticement of something lucrative, big money or whatever, then turn around and say the person is corrupt," said Charles Bentum, a lawyer for several judges implicated in the expose. "You cannot exonerate the enticer and condemn the victim."
The judiciary story made Anas famous in Ghana. Behind the scenes, Hussein-Suale's combination of diligence and mettle was impressing his boss; he was becoming Anas's right-hand man. In early 2018, Anas asked Hussein-Suale to accompany him to Malawi for a grim story about "muti" - the practice of harvesting human body parts for good luck rituals - that a young Malawian journalist, Henry Mhango, had brought to them. They would collaborate on the story with the BBC. "I chose Ahmed because I knew he had the capacity to withstand the shocks," said Anas.
But in Malawi they ran into trouble beyond anything Hussein-Suale had experienced. Mhango had set up a rural meeting with two men who said they would kill children for their body parts. In the dark, Hussein-Suale, Anas, Mhango and producer Darius Bazargan drove with the men to the outskirts of a village to negotiate. But the villagers had noticed the unfamiliar men meeting among the trees and suspected them of being child killers. They attacked the team, first with their feet and fists then with stones. Anas's suit was slashed up the back with a knife. The hidden cameras kept recording as the attacks intensified. "I'm here, I'm here, let me hold you," Anas said quietly to Hussein-Suale. Then: "They are going to kill us."
They were saved by a courageous group of villagers who put themselves between the team and the attackers and helped them reach the house of the village chief. The mob was trying to force the door and Mhango, on his first undercover job, was shaking. Hussein-Suale sat next to him. "He told me to forget my surroundings and be strong," Mhango recalled. "He said, 'Henry, these are the incidents that encourage us to do even more, because our work is to fight evil.'"
Eventually, with the help of the small group of villagers, they made it out and Anas and Hussein-Suale flew back to Ghana. But Hussein-Suale stayed in touch with Mhango, mentoring him in long phone conversations over the following year.
"He told me stories about Ghana and he gave me stories in Malawi. He had a huge effect on my career," said Mhango. "His death is not only a loss to Ghana, it is a loss to all of Africa. He was a journalist for Africa."
Shortly after the team returned from Malawi, Tiger Eye would produce a story that would make headlines across the continent and beyond. "Number 12" was an investigation into corruption in football refereeing, and Hussein-Suale again took the lead. Referee after referee in Ghana accepted cash gifts from undercover Tiger Eye journalists, and the team set its sights beyond the nation's borders. By the time the investigation was finished, nearly 100 football officials across Africa had accepted cash, including a Kenyan referee slated to officiate at the coming World Cup.
The investigation led to a cascade of bans and resignations. At the top of the list was Kwesi Nyantakyi, the head of the Ghanaian FA and a member of Fifa's elite council. Nyantakyi had flown to Dubai for what he believed was a meeting with a sheikh keen to invest in Ghanaian football. When he sat down in a hotel room opposite "HH Sheikh Hammad Al Thani" and stuffed $65,000 in cash into a black plastic bag, he could have no way of knowing the quiet man who had arranged the meeting was Ahmed Hussein-Suale.
Nyantakyi was banned from football for life, and the investigation delighted Ghanaian football fans sick of the corruption crippling the sport. It also infuriated some of Ghana's most powerful people. Kennedy Agyapong, an MP from Ghana's ruling party, railed against the group, saying he was offended by the way they conducted investigations. He obtained Hussein-Suale's name and location and made them public. Tiger Eye was forced to activate safety protocols: members left Accra; the main offices were abandoned and remain largely unused; and Hussein-Suale travelled to the north, returning periodically to the capital.
When his family saw the footage of Agyapong's rant, they urged Hussein-Suale to leave Ghana entirely, but he resisted. "He was of the view that he did not do anything wrong, that he did what he did to save the nation, so why should he leave," said Alhassan.
Anas also instructed Hussein-Suale to take a back seat amid the publicity. Begrudgingly he did, and in time he agreed to stay away from the family home for a period. But it jarred with his character. He pushed Anas to bring him back to investigative work and he began to return to Madina. He preferred to pray at his usual mosque. He felt safe in his home neighbourhood. "You could compare it to a gangster film," said Tiger Eye's lawyer Sammy Darko. "The gangster always feels safe in his neighbourhood because his friends and his family are around him."
But Ahmed was not a gangster. He was a journalist, a son, a husband, and a father to three young children. His murder has shocked Ghana and reverberated beyond its borders, drawing condemnation from President Akufo-Addo and from the UN. Press freedom activists say they fear a chilling effect for journalism on the continent. "It is the ultimate form of censorship," said Angela Quintal, Africa co-ordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists. "You censor the person that is killed; you censor the team they work with; and you send a message to others: if you cross the line we will get you."
A spokesman for Ghana's police force told the BBC that all the evidence they had pointed towards a targeted assassination, and they were pursuing lines of inquiry related to Hussein-Suale's work. Kennedy Agyapong has been informally questioned by police. He denies any responsibility for the killing, and claims Anas and his team are blackmailers who use dubious methods. Asked by the BBC if he now regretted publishing Hussein-Suale's personal information, he said: "I don't regret anything at all because they are evil."
Whoever is behind Hussein-Suale's murder, they may find that their actions have the opposite of the desired effect. In the days after his death, applications flooded in to Tiger Eye from young Ghanaian journalists keen to follow in his footsteps, Anas said. In time, Anas will vet them. Some may be set a test. "We will continue to fight," he said. "Ahmed always said posterity would not forgive us if we did not fight." Others vowed the same. "What happened to Ahmed will not hold me back," said Manasseh Azure Awuni, an investigative journalist with Ghana's Multimedia Group. "As I speak to you I am working on an investigation, and it will be broadcast in Ghana in the coming weeks."
Hussein-Suale was laid to rest last weekend in Accra. His funeral was attended by family, friends, politicians from various parties and strangers from across the city. His murder has left a family bereft. As well as his own three children, Hussein-Suale had taken in a nephew - the son of a brother who died in the line of duty as a policeman - and he supported numerous extended family members. He covered university fees, contributed to wedding funds and paid for the upkeep on houses. He was naturally generous, said his brother Kamil. "That is how we were raised," he said. "If you have something small, you share."
In Madina, Hussein-Suale's family still gathers each night outside the family home. Last night they were there. For 20 years they have come together after work and prayers to sit and talk, about nothing in particular, always out front, where friends and neighbours who pass by might stop and talk for a while too. Sometimes there are more than 20 people together until the early hours, sometimes there are less. The night Hussein-Suale died there were six or seven - close family and friends. He spent his last few hours with the people who raised him and shared his real life. He was quiet, as usual, and distracted by his phone, but he was in a good mood. Not everyone there knew exactly what he did. They loved him for the man he was that night in Madina. Across Ghana, people were more free because of his work.
Additional reporting by Favour Nunoo.
All pictures copyright
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Japanese people often fail to understand why neighbouring countries harbour a grudge over events that happened in the 1930s and 40s. The reason, in many cases, is that they barely learned any 20th Century history. I myself only got a full picture when I left Japan and went to school in Australia. | By Mariko OiBBC News, Tokyo
From Homo erectus to the present day - more than a million years of history in just one year of lessons. That is how, at the age of 14, I first learned of Japan's relations with the outside world.
For three hours a week - 105 hours over the year - we edged towards the 20th Century.
It's hardly surprising that some classes, in some schools, never get there, and are told by teachers to finish the book in their spare time.
When I returned recently to my old school, Sacred Heart in Tokyo, teachers told me they often have to start hurrying, near the end of the year, to make sure they have time for World War II.
"When I joined Sacred Heart as a teacher, I was asked by the principal to make sure that I teach all the way up to modern history," says my history teacher from Year Eight.
"We have strong ties with our sister schools in the Asian region so we want our students to understand Japan's historical relationship with our neighbouring countries."
I still remember her telling the class, 17 years ago, about the importance of Japan's war history and making the point that many of today's geopolitical tensions stem from what happened then.
I also remember wondering why we couldn't go straight to that period if it was so important, instead of wasting time on the Pleistocene epoch.
When we did finally get there, it turned out only 19 of the book's 357 pages dealt with events between 1931 and 1945.
There was one page on what is known as the Mukden incident, when Japanese soldiers blew up a railway in Manchuria in China in 1931.
There was one page on other events leading up to the Sino-Japanese war in 1937 - including one line, in a footnote, about the massacre that took place when Japanese forces invaded Nanjing - the Nanjing Massacre, or Rape of Nanjing.
There was another sentence on the Koreans and the Chinese who were brought to Japan as miners during the war, and one line, again in a footnote, on "comfort women" - a prostitution corps created by the Imperial Army of Japan.
There was also just one sentence on the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
I wanted to know more, but was not quite eager enough to delve into the subject in my spare time. As a teenager, I was more interested in fashion and boys.
My friends had a chance to choose world history as a subject in Year 11. But by that stage I had left the Japanese schooling system, and was living in Australia.
I remember the excitement when I noticed that instead of ploughing chronologically through a given period, classes would focus on a handful of crucial events in world history.
So brushing aside my teacher's objection that I would struggle with the high volume of reading and writing in English - a language I could barely converse in - I picked history as one of my subjects for the international baccalaureate.
My first ever essay in English was on the Rape of Nanjing.
There is controversy over what happened. The Chinese say 300,000 were killed and many women were gang-raped by the Japanese soldiers, but as I spent six months researching all sides of the argument, I learned that some in Japan deny the incident altogether.
Nobukatsu Fujioka is one of them and the author of one of the books that I read as part of my research.
"It was a battlefield so people were killed but there was no systematic massacre or rape," he says, when I meet him in Tokyo.
"The Chinese government hired actors and actresses, pretending to be the victims when they invited some Japanese journalists to write about them.
"All of the photographs that China uses as evidence of the massacre are fabricated because the same picture of decapitated heads, for example, has emerged as a photograph from the civil war between Kuomintang and Communist parties."
As a 17-year-old student, I was not trying to make a definitive judgement on what exactly happened, but reading a dozen books on the incident at least allowed me to understand why many people in China still feel bitter about Japan's military past.
While school pupils in Japan may read just one line on the massacre, children in China are taught in detail not just about the Rape of Nanjing but numerous other Japanese war crimes, though these accounts of the war are sometimes criticised for being overly anti-Japanese.
The same can be said about South Korea, where the education system places great emphasis on our modern history. This has resulted in very different perceptions of the same events in countries an hour's flying time apart.
One of the most contentious topics there is the comfort women.
Fujioka believes they were paid prostitutes. But Japan's neighbours, such as South Korea and Taiwan, say they were forced to work as sex slaves for the Japanese army.
Without knowing these debates, it is extremely difficult to grasp why recent territorial disputes with China or South Korea cause such an emotional reaction among our neighbours. The sheer hostility shown towards Japan by ordinary people in street demonstrations seems bewildering and even barbaric to many Japanese television viewers.
Equally, Japanese people often find it hard to grasp why politicians' visits to the controversial Yasukuni Shrine - which honours war criminals among other Japanese soldiers - cause quite so much anger.
I asked the children of some friends and colleagues how much history they had picked up during their school years.
Twenty-year-old university student Nami Yoshida and her older sister Mai - both undergraduates studying science - say they haven't heard about comfort women.
"I've heard of the Nanjing massacre but I don't know what it's about," they both say.
"At school, we learn more about what happened a long time ago, like the samurai era," Nami adds.
Seventeen-year-old Yuki Tsukamoto says the "Mukden incident" and Japan's invasion of the Korean peninsula in the late 16th Century help to explain Japan's unpopularity in the region.
"I think it is understandable that some people are upset, because no-one wants their own country to be invaded," he says.
But he too is unaware of the plight of the comfort women.
Former history teacher and scholar Tamaki Matsuoka holds Japan's education system responsible for a number of the country's foreign relations difficulties.
"Our system has been creating young people who get annoyed by all the complaints that China and South Korea make about war atrocities because they are not taught what they are complaining about," she said.
"It is very dangerous because some of them may resort to the internet to get more information and then they start believing the nationalists' views that Japan did nothing wrong."
I first saw her work, based on interviews with Japanese soldiers who invaded Nanjing, when I visited the museum in the city a few years ago.
"There were many testimonies by the victims but I thought we needed to hear from the soldiers," she says.
"It took me many years but I interviewed 250 of them. Many initially refused to talk, but eventually, they admitted to killing, stealing and raping."
When I saw her video interviews of the soldiers, it was not just their admission of war crimes which shocked me, it was their age. Already elderly by the time she interviewed them, many had been barely 20 at the time, and in a strange way, it humanised them.
I was choked with an extremely complex emotion. Sad to see Japan repeatedly described as evil and dubbed "the devil", and nervous because I wondered how people around me would react if they knew I was Japanese. But there was also the big question why - what drove these young soldiers to kill and rape?
When Matsuoka published her book, she received many threats from nationalist groups.
She and Fujioka represent two opposing camps in a debate about what should be taught in Japanese schools.
Fujioka and his Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform say most textbooks are "masochistic" and only teach about Japan in negative light.
"The Japanese textbook authorisation system has the so-called "neighbouring country clause" which means that textbooks have to show understanding in their treatment of historical events involving neighbouring Asian countries. It is just ridiculous," he says.
He is widely known for pressuring politicians to remove the term "comfort women" from all the junior high school textbooks. His first textbook, which won government approval in 2001, made a brief reference to the death of Chinese soldiers and civilians in Nanjing, but he plans to tone it down further in his next book.
But is ignorance the solution?
The Ministry of Education's guidelines for junior high schools state that all children must be taught about Japan's "historical relations with its Asian neighbours and the catastrophic damage caused by the World War II to humanity at large".
"That means schools have to teach about the Japanese military's increased influence and extension of its power [in the 1930s] and the prolonged war in China," says ministry spokesman Akihiko Horiuchi.
"Students learn about the extent of the damage caused by Japan in many countries during the war as well as sufferings that the Japanese people had to experience especially in Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Okinawa in order to understand the importance of international co-operation and peace.
"Based on our guideline, each school decides which specific events they focus on depending on the areas and the situation of the school and the students' maturity."
Matsuoka, however, thinks the government deliberately tries not to teach young people the details of Japan's atrocities.
Having experienced history education in two countries, the way history is taught in Japan has at least one advantage - students come away with a comprehensive understanding of when events happened, in what order.
In many ways, my schoolfriends and I were lucky. Because junior high students were all but guaranteed a place in the senior high school, not many had to go through what's often described as the "examination war".
For students who are competing to get into a good senior high school or university, the race is extremely tough and requires memorisation of hundreds of historical dates, on top of all the other subjects that have to be studied.
They have no time to dwell on a few pages of war atrocities, even if they read them in their textbooks.
All this has resulted in Japan's Asian neighbours - especially China and South Korea - accusing the country of glossing over its war atrocities.
Meanwhile, Japan's new Prime Minister Shinzo Abe criticises China's school curriculum for being too "anti-Japanese".
He, like Fujioka, wants to change how history is taught in Japan so that children can be proud of our past, and is considering revising Japan's 1993 apology over the comfort women issue.
If and when that happens, it will undoubtedly cause a huge stir with our Asian neighbours. And yet, many Japanese will have no clue why it is such a big deal.
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When The Supremes broke up in 1977, Mary Wilson faced a dilemma. | By Mark SavageBBC music reporter
For nearly 20 years, she'd taken second place to a lead singer - first Diana Ross, then, in the 1970s, Jean Terrell.
Launching a solo career meant that, for the first time, she would be the centre of attention.
"I was used to singing 'oohs' and 'babys'," she said. "Now there are words. I had to learn all over again."
But Wilson, who has died at the age of 76, was always more than a backing singer. She was the lynchpin of The Supremes, keeping the group intact and on the road after Ross's departure.
She coached three new line-ups and cultivated their live audience in Europe - where, she realised, "you don't have to have a current record or product to be remembered and loved and respected for your craft".
Even after the band's demise, she curated The Supremes' legacy, staging exhibitions of their gowns and writing two best-selling books documenting their achievements.
In their 1960s heyday, the Motown group rivalled the Beatles for commercial success - at one point scoring five consecutive number one singles in the US, an achievement that's still unmatched by any other female vocal group.
The first of those songs, Where Did Our Love Go, was even beamed into space so that astronauts on the Gemini 5 mission could enjoy The Supremes' glossy pop harmonies.
For three girls from the Brewster-Douglass Housing Projects of Detroit, it was success on a scale they could never have imagined.
"Miracles do happen," Wilson told Pure M Magazine. "It happened to us. We worked hard for it, but [we] totally, totally enjoyed being on top.
"We travelled the world, we met all kinds of people, worked with all kinds of people, it was one of those great experiences. Maybe everybody can't handle it, but I certainly did, and I certainly enjoyed it."
Wilson was born in Greenville, Mississippi, on 6 March 1944. Her parents separated when she was young and she was raised by family members until she was 10 years old, believing for many years that her mother was actually her aunt.
The family moved to Chicago and later Detroit, where they attended Aretha Franklin's father's church every Sunday.
Wilson, who learned to sing by imitating Lena Horne records, formed her first group with Aretha's sister, Carolyn, when she was in junior school.
The Supremes were the creation of a Detroit group called The Primes who wanted a new girl group to support them at local shows. They'd already found two singers, Betty McGlown and Florence Ballard - who suggested adding Wilson, her classmate, as a third member.
Wilson then recruited Diane Ross, who she'd first spotted from of the window of her apartment, calling her "the most energetic and pretty girl I'd ever seen".
Diamonds in the rough
Christened The Primettes, the band started performing covers of songs by Ray Charles and The Drifters at social clubs and talent shows around Detroit.
"I recall when we first got together... I absolutely felt complete," said Wilson in 2014. "I absolutely never had another thought of doing anything else in my life."
They quickly won an audition from Motown founder Berry Gordy - but he refused to sign the band until they had graduated from school.
Determined not to be forgotten, they would hang out on the lawn outside the label's headquarters until, one day, a producer came out and told the teenagers he needed someone to perform hand claps on a record.
"We jumped and said, 'We'll do it,'" Wilson told The Wall Street Journal last year. "Berry Gordy said, 'Wow, you girls are serious.' He signed us." (In fact, the girls' parents had to sign the contracts as they were still underage).
The band were quickly renamed The Supremes (other options included The Melodees, The Jewelettes and The Sweet Ps) and put through the "finishing school" by Maxine Powell, the Miss Manners of Motown.
"She used to tell us, 'You girls are just diamonds in the rough and we are here to polish you'," Wilson said.
"At the age of 15, Mrs Powell taught us to keep our knees together, how to get in and out of a car and she also said something that we used to laugh at: 'Never let your buttocks protrude.'"
Primed and polished the band nonetheless suffered a series of flops at the start of their career. In Motown's offices, they became known as "the no-hit Supremes".
McGlown left the band in 1960 and was replaced by Barbara Martin, who then left in 1962.
"We were still learning our trade," Wilson told the BBC in 2014. "I think after a couple of years, Berry Gordy recognised we were getting more serious about our careers - it wasn't just a little hobby any more.
"So he put us with his best writing team - Eddie and Brian Holland and Lamont Dozier. And 1964 was the year it suddenly all happened for us."
Their first number one was Where Did Our Love Go, recorded as a trio in 1964.
Holland-Dozier-Holland had originally written it for Wilson, thinking it suited her grittier soul voice, but Gordy insisted Ross - who by this stage had changed her name to Diana - should take the lead vocal.
That set the pattern for the band's next four number ones - Baby Love, Come See About Me, Stop! In The Name Of Love and Back In My Arms Again - where Ross was consistently thrust into the limelight.
By 1967, Gordy, who was romantically involved with the singer, had renamed the band Diana Ross & The Supremes. But Wilson never bore a grudge against the star.
Diana's ambition was "her strong point," she told Outsmart magazine in 1986. "She was not like me - she did not wait for things to happen; she went out there and made things happen. I admired that in her."
Role models
As the hits continued to rack up, The Supremes were a constant presence on radio and television - subtly contributing to shifting perceptions of race in America.
"TV really helped us," Wilson later recalled. "People were able to see us all over America and see black people in a different light. We were human beings. We were respected. We were loved."
The band's glamorous style was also a political statement - projecting black affluence and sophistication in the middle of the Civil Rights era.
"We were role models," Wilson said. "What we wore mattered."
The Supremes "were three of the most beautiful women I had ever seen," wrote Whoopi Goldberg in the foreword to Wilson's book, Supreme Style.
"These were brown women as they had never, ever been seen before on national television."
Seeing them perform, Goldberg was encouraged to think that "I too could be well-spoken, tall, majestic, an emissary of black folks" who, like the band themselves, "came from the projects".
The band's songs also tackled some of the big social taboos of the day - with Love Child and I'm Living In Shame addressing the stigma around single mothers and illegitimate children.
In 1966, the album Supremes A' Go-Go became the first record by an all-woman group to top the US album charts, knocking the Beatles' Revolver off the number one spot.
But by this stage, Ballard, who had been sexually assaulted as a child, was spiralling into depression and alcoholism. She was removed from the group in 1967 and replaced by Cindy Birdsong. She later died of a heart attack, aged 32.
Ross left the group soon after to pursue a (wildly successful) solo career, leaving Wilson as the only original member still in the act,
"I made up my mind that I didn't want my dream to die," she told the Chicago Tribune in 1986. "Everyone else was giving up the ship, so to speak. I was the ship... I was The Supremes."
With Jean Terrell on lead vocals, the band scored hits in the early 1970s with songs like Stoned Love and Nathan Jones, but they never really recovered from losing Ross.
Wilson laid the blame with Motown, feeling it had failed to promote or support the group's new line-up; and she later sued the label over the rights to The Supremes' name, and the terms of her contract as a solo artist.
"Motown didn't give me what I thought I should get in the contract," she explained. "They treated me like I was a newcomer, not someone who had helped build the company."
As the band faltered, Wilson's private life was causing even greater pain. She had married Pedro Ferrer in 1974, calling him "a charismatic man who could handle any problem", but the relationship quickly turned sour.
"He was a handsome devil with a gorgeous Afro - dashing, charming and seductive," she wrote in her book, Supreme Faith. "At first he gave me confidence, made me see that I had so much to offer without Diana. But I also found out Pedro had a violent temper."
Exploding into jealous rages, Ferrer "beat my face, gave me black eyes" and slashed her face with a glass, nearly severing her ear.
In 1979, she gave him a year to clean up his act. When he didn't, she walked away and their divorce became final in 1981.
The couple had three children, the youngest of whom, Rafael, died in 1994, when Wilson's jeep hit the central reservation of a Los Angeles freeway and overturned.
She later said it was her faith in God that helped her come to terms with the trauma.
"Physically I have healed. Emotionally it's ongoing," she told The Chicago Tribune. "[But] I was probably as strong the first day as I am now because of my belief.
"We're never taught about how to handle death. Death to me is a wonderful part of the living experience, so when my son passed I pretty much understood and said goodbye at that time. I cry every day, but then I get right back and do what I have to do."
Legal campaigns
Wilson found major success in the 1980s with her memoir, Dreamgirl: My Life as a Supreme. The title was taken from the Broadway musical Dreamgirls, which was based on The Supremes' career (Wilson called the play "dead on") and the book scrupulously detailed the abuses the band had suffered at the hands of the record industry.
The Supremes were tied to a 3 per cent royalty rate (less expenses), she revealed, meaning they would have made less than $5,000 (£3,629) from a record that sold a million copies.
A New York Times bestseller, it remains one of the most popular rock-and-roll autobiographies of all time. Wilson followed it up with a second volume, and a book on The Supremes' style.
In 2001, she received an associate's degree in arts from New York University, the result of five years studying in between touring commitments.
"My mother couldn't read or write, and the one thing she always stressed was education," she said as she donned her graduation robes. "It's a personal achievement and I'm very proud of myself."
In her later years, she also appeared in musicals, became an inspirational speaker and appeared in the 2019 series of Dancing With The Stars - despite having heart bypass surgery in 2006.
Fiercely protective of The Supremes' legacy, she also lobbied - successfully - for copyright laws that made it illegal for tribute acts to pass themselves off as the real thing.
And she remained proud of her achievements until the very end.
"The music has lasted, it's still fresh," she said in 2019. "Motown music still has a current sound to it, which is really wonderful. And it's great to be a part of it."
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Health Minister Mark Drakeford has defended Labour's record running the Welsh NHS following a week of sustained criticism from the Conservatives and the Daily Mail newspaper. He was interviewed by Andrew Neil of the BBC's Sunday Politics programme and responded to the main points of criticism. | On cancer treatment
We have an ambitious target in cancer - it is 10% more ambitious than the target in England.
We have record numbers of patients with cancer receiving treatment within 62 days.
We have ambitious targets - we're getting closer to reaching them.
They outperform the system in England every single month and we provide a very good service indeed to cancer patients.
On ambulance response times
Demand for ambulance services goes up all the time. Last month in September the Welsh Ambulance Service conveyed more patients to hospital within eight minutes than before.
But we understand that we're not doing well enough - we've got plans in place to improve it.
There are more things that we need to do and we're determined to do just that.
On accident and emergency admissions
We're in the same position as health services across the United Kingdom that as demand rises and resource stays static, the pressures are real in the system.
We want to do more to reach the ambitious targets we have but nobody should go away with the idea that the big picture of the Welsh NHS is about missing things - actually hundreds of thousands of people every single week in Wales get careful, compassionate and effective care.
We are investing an extra £200m this year and £225m extra next year in our Welsh NHS despite the fact that our budget is cut by 10% by the Westminster government.
We protect the NHS in Wales because we know just how important it is to our patients.
We have protected our social services and our social care system so that they work together with the health system - we have an integrated system here in Wales.
In England they have slashed and burned their way through social services departments - it's why their hospitals are chock full of people who ought to be discharged and there are no services for those people to go to.
On calls for an inquiry
In Wales, as everywhere else, there are real pressures in our health service - we see them every day, we work hard every day to address them.
I will not agree to a backward looking, undifferentiated, timeless, uncosted, unproductive inquiry.
What we do is where we see things that are wrong - and there are things that need attention - we inquire into them, we publish the results, we deal with the consequences of those reports.
There's nothing at all to hide in the Welsh NHS. We are the most scrutinised health service in the United Kingdom - we report on it every single week of the year.
We have independent people inquiring into our NHS ... we published an independent inquiry overseen by very senior people, not from Wales at all, that carried out spot checks unannounced in all our major hospitals, 70 wards across Wales.
They said that the big picture of care in Wales is that it is careful, it is compassionate, and it provides an excellent service for Welsh patients.
On a review by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)
We have not pulled out of that - there will be an OECD visit to Wales, there will be a report by the OECD on the Welsh health service, it will be published in full.
What we will not do is fall in with the deliberate distortions attempted to be introduced by the secretary of state in England in which he wishes against all the rules to allow himself an opportunity to quote selectively from a report that will not have been published ... in an entirely partisan, politically-driven way, absolutely consistent with his appalling behaviour over the last week.
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After a damning report from MPs on the clothing industry's environmental credentials, how can we make our wardrobe more sustainable? Two students took up the challenge of repairing, reusing and recycling clothes for a London Fashion Week show. | By Michael Cowan and Owen KeanBBC Victoria Derbyshire programme
It's mid-afternoon, and Loughborough University student Marcus Rudd is going through his wardrobe, piece by piece.
He is with sustainable stylist Alice Wilby, and it turns out his wardrobe is not as environmentally-friendly as he had hoped - as he announces he buys around 10 to 15 T-shirts a year.
"Did you know it takes about 3,000 litres of water to make one cotton T-shirt?" Alice asks him, bursting his bubble.
"That's about as much water as [the average person's] drinks in three years."
And then they come to the high-priced fashion in his wardrobe - the Versace jeans and Giorgio Armani jacket.
Alice is quick to point out the styling is similar to that of many sustainable brands.
"There isn't anything to me specifically that sets them aside as being designer - it's a pretty classic cut, it's a pretty classic style," she says.
"I feel like you could buy this from a vintage shop," she adds, of one of Marcus's coats in which he takes extra pride.
The fashion industry is a major contributor to greenhouse gases, water pollution, air pollution and the over-use of water.
It's exacerbated, MPs say, by so-called "fast fashion" - inexpensive clothing produced rapidly by mass-market retailers.
The sector is proving increasingly popular.
Goby Chan, a fellow Loughborough University student flat-sharing with Marcus, says the low price makes such clothes a particularly appealing prospect for young people.
"You just go for it," she says, precisely because it's so cheap.
But it also means many people purchase clothes they never wear - buying clothes in the hope of one day wearing them on a night out due to the fear others will notice you've worn the same dress twice.
The scale of the problem is brought to life with a visit to the Oxfam recycling centre in Batley, Yorkshire.
They sort through 80 tonnes of donated clothing and textiles per week.
In one of their huge barns are stacks upon stacks of clothes, formed in to bales each weighing half a tonne.
The British public sends the equivalent of 11,000 such bales to landfill each week, a figure that visibly shocks Gobi and Marcus.
Of course, the clothing bales at the Oxfam factory do not go to landfill - they will instead be put to other purposes, such as insulation.
This is because about 6% of the clothing Oxfam receives from donations are not of a fit state to be worn again - a problem increasing with fast fashion.
"We do get a lot of that low-quality, High Street clothing in, and there's just nothing we can really do with it," explains Oxfam's Holly Bentley.
So how can we, as consumers, turn the tide?
For Alice, it is about the three 'R's - recycle, repair and reuse.
She sets Goby and Marcus a challenge - to create an outfit to wear in a sustainable fashion show at London Fashion Week - using only second-hand and reused clothing, plus a repaired or restyled item from their wardrobe.
The show is run by Amy Powney, creative director of sustainable designer brand Mother of Pearl.
She explains that ethical fashion is not just about the fabric a garment is made out of, but the whole supply chain.
"The average they say [your clothes travel during production] is five countries, for every garment you buy," she explains, much to Gobi and Marcus's surprise.
"For each stage you have to send it to another country - package it off each time, then ship it - which is fuel and energy.
"We'd love to see legislation for the labels in your garment not just to say 'Made in' wherever it's from - but 'grown in', 'finished in', 'manufactured in', so you can understand there is a longer process."
Goby thinks this would be a good step forward.
"I think people would actually treasure the clothing more when they actually know there are so many processes in one jumper," she says.
"They will think twice before they actually buy so many of them."
It is with this sustainably-charged mindset that both enter their task.
Marcus chooses to repair a traditional Indian Kurta given to him by his grandmother, pairing it with some dark blue jeans and brown shoes that he bought from a charity shop.
Goby picks a black top with sheer detail sleeves to repair, with a black chiffon detail dress from a local charity shop.
When the big day comes a few days later, they are ready to model the ethical outfits waist-deep in a pit of balls made from recycled plastic.
Each one is intended to represent the millions of microfibres that wash off our clothes when they get washed, entering the UK's water streams and eventually the food chain.
For Goby, it is the culmination of a "very exciting" experience, but also one that has opened her eyes to the damage the fashion industry is causing.
Now before buying clothes, she says, she will think about what material it is made from, and be more aware of what website she is buying from.
"I do think it is a really good option to be buy less, but buy better," she adds.
She also promises to rewear clothes that have become lost in her wardrobe, and refashion others into new and unique accessories.
As for Marcus, he has already bought more clothes from vintage shops - a trend he very much plans to continue.
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The textiles sector is already having to prepare for a "no deal" Brexit. In the case of one fast-growing Scottish firm, that means putting UK prices up by 12%.
Even with a deal, it's too late to unravel some of those preparations, and the sector warns many companies are not yet aware of extra paperwork and regulation.
With less EU trade, there are hopes of trade deals with other countries. But instead, Monday saw an escalation of the EU-US trade dispute over aircraft manufacturing which has snared Scots cashmere and whisky distillers. | Douglas FraserBusiness/economy editor, Scotland
Snag Tights were born in the Brexit era. Less than three years ago in West Lothian, Brie Reid and Tom Martin started up the company, having spent a long time finding the right manufacturer.
They found it in a family-run textiles mill in Italy.
They chose West Lothian as their base for its relatively low price rental, reliable, low-churn workforce, motorway access and courier collections that can get the product to American customers faster than some can manage in the US.
And the product? Bright and funky coloured tights, with special editions and fun names: Builder's Tea, Bloody Mary, Blue Hawaiian, White Russian, Fishies and Sharkies.
Its website does not feature the typical underwear model. Seven sizes range from 6 to 36.
It has won a lot of word-of-mouth recommendations and repeat business for a product at £7.50 per pair. Marketing is largely through Facebook, and an online community, where enthusiastic fans are known as "Snagglers".
Size inclusive
Brie Read had done her market research, with figures showing 90% of women can't find tights that fit them properly. "Sixty per cent of women are now over size 16, and the fashion industry doesn't cater for these people as it should," she told me.
"For us, the dream is to be completely size inclusive, so everyone of every size should be able to buy the same clothes, and have tights that fit".
Only 30 months in, the company is sending out 4,000 parcels per day, to 90 countries, and turning over £3m per month. They now represent 60% of their Italian supplier's production.
With 70 people on the payroll now, they want to take on more - up to 100 more. They're on a rapid "land grab" of this "size-inclusive" market, before others can catch up.
Going Dutch
But there's a snag. Two of them, in fact. One: A "no deal" Brexit at the end of next month means that their tights would be imported from Italy with a 12% tariff.
The UK has said it plans to impose that on finished garments, to protect UK manufacturers from low priced competition- just as the EU has been doing. Fabric gets an 8% tariff and yarn is on 4%.
For Snag, that tax will be passed directly on to the UK customer - roughly 30% of their market - with an explanation on the website and with a receipt explaining that the charge is a Brexit tax, which benefits neither the seller nor the customer.
And two: Around a third of the market is in the European Union. To send from post-Brexit Britain into the EU would carry another 12% tariff.
That makes no sense, so on 1 December, they open a new distribution centre in the Netherlands. They don't expect to shed any jobs in Scotland, as business is growing fast.
Snag would have preferred to grow in Scotland, but two potential tariffs of 12% meant it had to go elsewhere. So remaining within the world's biggest single market, the Dutch town of Venlo gets the jobs benefit of this business success. From there, they will also fulfil orders for non-EU countries, including the USA and Australia.
"Left entirely alone"
Of course, there could be a deal, and that would probably mean tariff-free trade. But it's come far too late for a company that couldn't put its growth on hold while the political Brexit can was kicked down the road.
"Those are jobs that would have been here in Scotland, if it hadn't been for Brexit," says Read. "Now, they're going to be in Europe. I'm very happy we'll be able to offer the people of Venlo jobs, but I would have rather they'd have been here."
She reflects: "It's been really difficult, particularly over the last year, because we've been expecting some movement in terms of whether there will be a deal or not.
"But so little movement has happened. We've had to take it entirely into our own hands and that feels very unfair - rather than having any advice or expertise or anything from the government about how this is going to happen.
"It feels like we have been left entirely alone just to do what we can. That's not how you want to grow a business and that's now how you make an economy work."
Fashion runway
Importing garments from the EU and selling back into it has put Snag Tights in a particularly difficult place. But it's not alone, in a UK industry employing 120,000 people, turning over £9bn, and with three-quarters of its exports going to the EU.
According to Adam Mansell, chief executive of Textiles Scotland and also of the UK textiles and fashion trade body, larger companies that sell into Europe have been making similar plans.
Smaller companies, of which the fashion industry has many, are much less likely to be prepared for what may hit them soon. Even taking some garments to the Paris Fashion Show for a couple of days next year, he points out, will require an export certificate, and these companies have never had to think about that before.
If the proposed level of tariffs is charged on all the garments, fabrics and yarn sold from the UK into the EU, the trade association reckons it could add around £1bn to prices. Brie Read asks where that tax revenue is going, and could it be recycled to help the firms affected?
If there is a deal, with no tariffs, there is still an expectation of much more paperwork and requirements on labelling. Some goods that are made from yarns and fabrics imported from outside the UK and EU would still have tariffs at varying rates, when finished garments are sold into the EU.
"Global Britain"
And there will be labelling requirements, where there are dual licensing for safety and for use of chemicals.
"The export paperwork will still apply in the event of a deal," says Adam Mansell. "There will still be borders and the need to have the right paperwork. They'll still need the right labelling. And with intellectual property and design rights, you'll have to protect them in the UK and the EU.
"We very much hope there will be a deal, but even without a deal, it will be a completely different trading environment. Companies are going to have to learn to do things twice".
There is a potential "global Britain" upside to Brexit, if the UK can secure trade deals that reduce tariffs on exports to other countries. The USA, for instance, has tariffs of more than 30% on finished garments, and is a ready market for luxury goods.
"It's an incredibly expensive market for our exporters to break into. So if we can get a free trade deal with the US, that would be a huge advantage."
Cashmere and Scotch
First, though, there is the hope that a new Washington administration will remove the punitive 25% tariffs on cashmere sweaters, aimed at the Scottish industry while allowing Italian rival products in to the US with no tariffs.
Along with the same level of tariff on single malt Scotch whisky, imposed 13 months ago as part of the dispute between the US and EU (along with the UK), over subsidies for Airbus in Europe and for Boeing in the US.
That dispute escalated on Monday, with the EU imposing a 25% tariff on nearly £3bn-worth of US exports, ranging across tobacco, nuts, fruit juice, fish, spirits, bags, tractors and casino and gym equipment.
The intention of the EU is to match the position of the US Trade Representative, using that leverage to force Washington into talks on a resolution.
New faces in charge in America may help lower the temperature and re-set relations. But the dispute pre-dates Donald Trump's presidency. And it would be just the first step towards a much more complex question of securing a US-UK deal, in which food and agriculture will weigh more heavily than Harris Tweed jackets.
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The body of a 58-year-old man has been found at an address in Worcester. | West Mercia Police said they were called to an address in Lavender Road at about 04:00 BST on Thursday. The death is being treated "unexplained".
A post mortem examination is due to take place and the next of kin has been informed.
West Midlands Ambulance Service said it was called to the scene to find a man in cardiac arrest.
The road remained closed on Thursday while investigations continued.
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The Ulster Unionist peer Lord Laird was a paid advisor to a registered sex offender in Florida and hosted meetings for him at the House of Lords as part of a takeover of the Belfast Giants ice hockey team. | By Julian O'NeillBBC Newsline
Lord Laird has defended his dealings with Christopher Knight.
He said he first learned about his past about 18 months ago.
When the Belfast Giants and the company that runs the Odyssey Arena found out, they scuppered the deal.
Lord Laird said he cannot understand what the problem is.
American Christopher Knight first met the Belfast Giants in autumn 2012.
Initially, Mr Knight, who has a background in the telecommunications industry, had sought to sponsor the team before then offering to buy owner Jim Gillespie's 90% shareholding.
Within less than four weeks of negotiations, Mr Gillespie had sold.
But some at the Giants were curious about Mr Knight's financial background and that led to the team's general manager, Todd Kelman, making a discovery based on Mr Knight having different dates of birth on company documents.
"He was using the same name with different birth dates," said Mr Kelman.
Aliases
"All I did was google his birth dates. His full name with one birth date and then his full name with another birth date listed and bam - first thing on Google."
It was a link to Mr Knight's listing on Florida State's Sex Offender Register. The register includes a photograph of Mr Knight, along with seven aliases he has used.
The register's "crime description" is of two charges of "lewd/lascivious battery, sex with victim 12-15 years old", dating from 2003.
Mr Knight had pleaded no contest to the charges. Adjudication was withheld and he was given five years' sexual offender probation and was placed on the state's sex offender register.
Mr Kelman resigned in mid-February, followed by the players and coaching staff.
Veteran defenseman Rob Sandrock said there was not much debate about the decision: "Once this came out, for us to take the stance we did was a no-brainer. We all jumped onboard right away.
New contracts
"The management here have done a great job in getting the family atmosphere at the arena. It's not just about the games, it's about the kids, mums and dads, so to have someone like that at the top the organisation, it is not very good for the sport."
At the same time, the Odyssey Trust, which runs the arena, used a clause in its contract which allowed it to terminate the lease by which Mr Knight's team could play at the rink.
It also offered the players new contracts to play under its management.
The Elite Ice Hockey League was satisfied with this arrangement and has allowed the Giants to continue to play out their remaining schedule this season uninterrupted.
Mr Knight's response to subsequent inquiries has been to insist he was put on the list inappropriately.
However, the BBC has spoken to James Weick Jr, the attorney who prosecuted for the State of Florida in the case against Knight and who confirmed no error.
"The only way you are put on the Sex Offender Registry is if you have pleaded to a crime. In Mr Knight's situation, since he received five year's sex offender probation, he is automatically put on the registry, whether he was convicted of the crime by getting an adjudication of guilt or after a withhold of adjudication.
"He is on that sex offender register 'correctly', for want of a better word. There is no mistake about that."
As for getting the entry removed from the register, as Mr Knight had claimed he was doing, Mr Weick stated the procedure is clear: "In Florida, the only way you get back off that list is to complete 20 years from the time of the conviction or you have to go back to the Court of Appeals, get the plea vacated and start the process again."
Affidavits
Mr Knight has also claimed that he had made no secret of the entry on the register when he entered negotiations to buy the team.
The BBC has been given sworn affidavits from both Jim Gillespie and Todd Kelman, as well as the chief executive of the Odyssey, all affirming that none of them was aware of the register entry until January.
One person who knew from the outset of sale negotiations was Lord Laird.
The Ulster Unionist peer had been present with Mr Knight when he was first introduced to the Giants last autumn and afterwards hosted two meetings at the House of Lords that progressed the American's purchase.
Lord Laird and Mr Knight had a business relationship dating back almost two years.
In May 2011, the peer made a declaration on the House of Lords register of interests. This was as a paid advisor to Knight Communications, a company co-founded by Mr Knight.
It was an association which was to last right up until the Belfast Giants deal was killed and Mr Knight's background was about to become public.
Lord Laird told us: "A way back at the very start, well, not the very start but near the start, I gave advice to him and for that he gave me a small monetary reward."
For four months, Lord Laird was also a director of another company with which Mr Knight had links called Time is On Your Side Limited.
But he resigned that position just a matter of days after the Odyssey told him it could not be associated with Mr Knight.
At the same time, he removed his advisory role with Knight Communications from the Lords register.
When Todd Kelman discovered the Florida link, he said he challenged Lord Laird who admitted to him he had known for some time.
Lord Laird told the BBC he cannot see what the controversy is about: "It's not for me to do due diligence into someone with a lot of money or claiming to have a lot of money.
'Minor misdemeanour'
"That's not my issue - ok? He is very upfront into what happened to him in Florida and that seemed perfectly reasonable to me that he should go around telling people about it.
"In Northern Ireland, society requires me to work with people who have terrorist convictions and who are now in government. So we're worried about some minor misdemeanour in Florida? I just can't get around in my mind what the problem is."
Lord Laird also believed his association with Mr Knight could have benefited Northern Ireland because Mr Knight had talked of creating a telecommunications business employing 1,500 people.
The peer also told the BBC he had seen a letter from the Metropolitan Police stating Mr Knight was of no interest to them and did not have to be placed on the UK sex register because his five year probation period ended in 2008.
Mr Knight has claimed the register was not the real reason he lost control of the Belfast Giants and has threatened to pursue the matter in the courts.
While he said he was willing to be interviewed by the BBC, he pulled out on two occasions after reporting to the police two alleged incidents at his London home.
On a third occasion he attempted to impose conditions upon our reporting.
You can hear more on this story on BBC Newsline on BBC One at 18:30 GMT on Thursday
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Athlete and law student Pani Mamuneas has never had a girlfriend and says he suspects the only women who approach him want to tick "dwarf" off their bucket list. The 19-year-old decided to do something about it and applied for a TV dating show. | You always hear girls say 'ooh what's your type? Oh tall, you know tall and handsome' and I'm the total opposite of that.
At 4ft 7in people have always asked me 'would you have wanted to be born taller?' But now, I can't imagine life any other way.
When I was younger I never saw myself as having a disability. I wasn't even aware of it until my teenage years when growth spurts happened to others and I started to see that I was different and school became very difficult.
My fellow students at school in Leicester would ask 'Pani why are you so small? Were you born the size of a pea?' Thinking back, all those things that hurt me could have easily been avoided by realising people were just curious - they were kids asking silly questions.
I have what's known as Achondroplasia - a form of dwarfism. Apparently I'm taller than average for my condition but still quite tiny and it definitely affected potential relationships and how I have viewed myself over the years.
My male friends and I would always talk about girls and celebrities, the ones we would dream of marrying and how we would ask them out. But this is when things went very wrong for me.
At the age of 12 I asked a girl out. We went to the cinema and seemed to have a good time, but the next day the gossip began.
I secretly told a friend in the school library that I liked her but he wrote it in big letters on the whiteboard for everyone to see - when I saw it I wanted to disappear from the face of the earth.
Myself and the girl both ended up in tears and she felt too embarrassed to talk to me again.
That was when I lost all of my confidence and thought I was not good enough because of my height.
I stopped talking to girls and I certainly wouldn't reveal if I fancied someone.
I was afraid of what girls would think of me, always worrying they might ignore or tease me, or treat me like a nobody, because I was different.
It was a very difficult time of my life.
When I reached college, however, things started to look up. Everyone seemed to have matured and the general bullying stopped. It became a time for me to discover who I was, and what I wanted to do with my future.
Sadly, this new way of thinking didn't mean my love life improved and I had other challenges to overcome including going to nightclubs with friends.
I wouldn't have the confidence to go up to girls, chat to them or ask them to dance. I always felt that because I was different if a woman approached me it was so she could tick it off her bucket list.
It was at this point, having never had a girlfriend, I decided to contact Channel 4's The Undateables - a reality show which tries to match disabled people with a partner - and so face my fear of dating with the hope of potentially finding somebody.
It was a drastic thing to do but I thought if I could successfully go on a date on a television show I wouldn't have any confidence problems in the future.
Facing my fears worked and I now feel able to approach a woman and have a conversation with her because I have learned there isn't anything to be afraid of. If the girl doesn't like me fair enough, but some open-minded people will like me.
I had been competing internationally in shot put and javelin and hoped to compete in the Paralympic Games in Rio last year but injury forced me to take time out.
Participating in The Undateables helped me to focus on a different aspect of life and took my mind off the injury although I've now returned to training with my sights set on the 2020 Paralympics in Tokyo as well as taking a degree in law.
This process has further boosted my confidence and I've realised that being short isn't a barrier it's a feature. All this time I shouldn't have thought of myself as less of a person.
Being me is the best thing I can do better than anyone else.
The Undateables transmits on Monday nights at 21:00 GMT on Channel 4 and is also available on All 4.
Produced by Beth Rose
For more Disability News, follow BBC Ouch on Twitter and Facebook, and subscribe to the weekly podcast.
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For visitors today to Chechnya's bustling capital, Grozny, war already seems like a distant memory. But thousands of Chechens are still waiting for relatives who disappeared in the war to return - their hopes boosted by traditional beliefs about life and death. | By Dina NewmanBBC News
Travellers returning from Grozny marvel at the transformation of the city.
Eleven years ago, after Russia's second military operation to bring the republic under central control, it stood in ruins. Today it's a place of busy cafes, smart shops and new high-rise buildings.
Yet scholars note that the war-inflicted wounds in Chechen society are not healing.
Thousands of families cannot accept that loved-ones who disappeared may be dead - either because there has been no official confirmation of death, or because of the Chechen belief in the power of dreams.
Relatives believe they connect with lost family members through dreams, and this hinders the process of mourning and moving on.
As long as one family member can dream of the missing relative, the whole family feels his or her presence in their daily life.
Fortune tellers
The subject has been studied by Cambridge University social anthropologist Mantas Kvedaravicius, who spent long periods in Chechnya between 2007 and 2009 and shot a film that was premiered at this year's Berlin Film Festival.
"He comes to me each night, he is present in my life, his presence gives me joy," says one mother quoted by Kvedaravicius.
Another mother dreams of three people sleeping in a room. Two of them are her surviving sons, and the third bed, she reasons, must be occupied by her missing son.
"I want to lift the blanket, but I dare not look," she says. "I think if I look my heart will break. Better I should think that there lies my Rustam."
A third mother has a more puzzling story.
"I dreamed of my son and he had a hurt leg and he asked me for his shoes," she says. "I had old galoshes, which I took - and I broke one, and gave my son one-and-a-half."
Such dreams are treasured and discussed in detail with friends, family and fortune tellers, to determine the loved-one's whereabouts and state of health.
Before the family receives proof of death, even a brief thought of the missing person as dead would cause a feeling of guilt, as if it were a betrayal.
"Families talk about their missing members daily, and always in the present tense," says Chechen historian Maerbek Vachagaev.
"When I am visiting, I always ask for news of the disappeared. Sometimes I am certain that the missing person is no longer alive, and his family's hopes are futile. But I would not dare suggest it.
"'Who are you to know that our son is dead? How can you be so sure?' they would reply."
Hopeless search
Outside Chechnya, it is generally understood that the vast majority of those who disappeared are dead.
But Chechen and Russian officials are rarely able to give confirmation of death.
It is impossible for Chechen officials even to acknowledge cases of disappearance, unless they can be blamed on Russian federal troops. Nearly all Chechens avoid talking about abduction or torture by Chechen security forces, for fear of punishment.
The myth of Chechen prisoners stuck somewhere in Russian jails is therefore free to circulate.
Mantas Kvedaravicius accuses Chechen officials of promoting what he calls the cruel "politics of hope".
"This is a way of keeping someone at bay," he says.
"Not only the years of family life lost in the hopeless search, but the very absence of the death and the recognition of this absence, cause individuals to collapse from inside."
He compares the state of the disappeared relatives with the concept of Barzakh, in Muslim teaching - a state between life and death, where souls rest until the day of resurrection.
In the words of one mother: "I hear a sound at night. I wake up. I look through the window and there is nothing. I do not have him alive, and I do not have him dead."
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A device believed to be have been an unexploded World War Two bomb was donated by experts after it was discovered on an Isle of Man beach. | The device was found on Castletown beach and destroyed in a controlled explosion on Thursday.
It was the second device to be found in just over a week after an "unexploded projectile" was discovered in a rock pool on 22 February.
The Manx coastguard said the area was being kept "under observation".
Several other explosives have been discovered around the island in recent years.
In 2016 a wartime device was discovered in Ramsey, while two mortars were later discovered on a green lane track in the Sartfell area, near Kirk Michael.
The Isle of Man Coastguard said suspicious objects found around the Manx coast should always be reported as soon as possible.
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India has entered full election mode: voting began on 11 April, and the final ballot will be cast more than five weeks later on 19 May. Every day, the BBC will be bringing you all the latest updates on the twists and turns of the world's largest democracy. | On Friday, a row erupted over a veterans' letter warning of campaign rhetoric
What happened?
A row erupted over a letter from retired Indian military officers urging President Ram Nath Kovind to ensure that political parties do not use the armed forces to "further their political agendas".
The letter, which is signed by eight former service chiefs and more than 100 veterans, is addressed to the president. It was sent to various Indian publications on Thursday night - the first day of voting in the Indian election.
"We appeal to to you to ensure that the secular and a-political character of the Armed Forces is preserved," the letter said.
It referred to the "unusual and completely unacceptable practice of political leaders taking credit for military operations like cross-border air strikes, and even going so far as to claim the Armed Forces to be 'Modiji ka sena' [Modi's army]".
But on Friday the president's office denied that it received such a letter - and some some of the veterans, including former service chiefs, distanced themselves from it, saying they had not signed it.
"I don't agree with whatever has been written in that letter. We have been misquoted," retired air marshal NC Suri told ANI news agency that he didn't sign the letter.
"I wrote that armed forces are apolitical and support the politically elected government. And no, my consent has not been taken for any such letter," he said.
But other signatories appeared to stand by the letter. Kapil Kak, a retired air vice-marshal, told The Hindu newspaper that he agrees with everything in the letter, adding that "the letter was sent by email and endorsement was also given over email".
Why does this matter?
It's an interesting development, especially since the letter appeared on the first day of voting in an election that is largely being seen as a referendum on Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
It also specifically refers to Mr Modi and the governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which have drawn flak for including India's recent strikes in Pakistani territory in their election campaign.
At a rally earlier in the week, Mr Modi asked first-time voters to vote for "those who carried out the air strike". Local media reported that India's election body had asked its officials to investigate the remarks.
And Yogi Adityanath, the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh and a close ally of Mr Modi, landed in trouble for calling the Indian army "Modi's army".
Some analysts believe that Mr Modi and his party may get a boost ahead of voting because of the narrative they have adopted over the attack.
How do you vote in the election?
Here's a video explaining everything that happens inside a polling station - and what happens to your vote after that:
Three dead amid violence in the first polling phase
What happened?
At least three people died on Thursday, as tens of millions of Indians flocked to the polls to vote in the first phase of the general election.
Two men died amid clashes at polling booths in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh while one person died in Indian-administered Kashmir as protests broke out in Kupwara district after polling, according to local media.
Long queues dominated the first phase of polling, as voters turned up in high numbers across 18 states and two union territories.
The election commission said that turnout on Thursday was more or less on par with polling during the first phase the 2014 polls.
The hilly north-eastern state of Tripura recorded the highest voter turnout at 81.8% while the eastern state of Bihar saw the lowest at 50%.
In the 2014 election, overall voter turnout was about 66%.
On Thursday, it was ready, set, vote!
Tens of millions of Indians voted on the first day of a general election that is being seen as a referendum on Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Indians in 20 states and union territories cast their ballots in 91 constituencies.
The seven-phase vote to elect a new lower house of parliament will continue until 19 May. Counting day is 23 May.
Hundreds of voters began to queue up outside polling centres early Thursday morning for the first of seven days of voting over six weeks. Their concerns ranged from jobs and unemployment to India's role in the world and national security.
The states and union territories that went to the polls were: Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jammu and Kashmir, Maharashtra, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Odisha, Sikkim, Telangana, Tripura, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, West Bengal, Andaman and Nicobar islands and Lakshadweep.
Polling in some states, such as Andhra Pradesh and Nagaland, concluded in one day. But other states, such as Uttar Pradesh, will hold polls in several phases.
On Wednesday, Rahul Gandhi filed his nomination
What happened?
India's main opposition party president Rahul Gandhi has filed his nomination in his family stronghold Amethi, in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh.
He travelled to the district office in a 3km procession where he was cheered by thousands of party supporters.
He has been the MP of the constituency for 15 years and is campaigning for a fourth term.
Why does this matter?
Rahul Gandhi's performance in Amethi - a seat he has already won three times - will be closely watched.
In 2014, he won by a majority of a little over 100,000 votes - which was seen as being too close given that the constituency is seen as a family stronghold. He is up against his same rival from then - BJP MP Smriti Irani who led a spirited campaign against him.
Ms Irani has wasted no time attacking Mr Gandhi.
His decision to also contest from Wayanad in the southern state of Kerala has been called an "insult" by Ms Irani. Some of his critics have said that the second nomination showed that he was afraid that he would lose in Amethi, although the party says it is actually to allow the party to build a base in the south.
Be that as it may, losing Amethi is just not an option for Mr Gandhi. There is way too much at his stake - most of all his reputation and credibility as a leader.
His supporters are confident though. One of them told the BBC's Geeta Pandey who is at the rally, that this time Mr Gandhi would win by 500,000 votes and no-one would vote for Ms Irani.
NaMo TV tests limits of Election Commission
What is happening?
NaMo TV - a television channel dedicated to streaming speeches of Prime Minister Narendra Modi - has continued doing so despite a 48 hour "blackout" that news organisations are expected to adhere to before voting. This means that no speeches by politicians, advertisements or other content that could "sway voters" can be broadcast during this period.
But with voting due to begin in less than 24 hours, the channel is broadcasting speeches by Mr Modi non-stop.
Why does it matter?
Firstly, this looks to be a direct violation of the Election Commission's guidelines, although the government has said that NaMo TV is a "platform service" offered by cable operators as a "special service". Some cable operators had initially listed it as a "Hindi news channel" but this was quickly withdrawn.
As a "special platform service", the government says the channel does not require license or permission to broadcast content.
Yet as the Indian Express newspaper points out, the decision to continue broadcasting Mr Modi's speeches may contravene a section in the guidelines that prohibits display of "any election matter by means of cinematography, television or other similar apparatus" in the 48-hour period before polling concludes in an area.
"The legal and definitional confusion about NaMo TV has arisen only because no one so far has exploited this loophole in existing broadcast regulation on such a massive scale," writes MK Venu in the Wire website.
The channel has, in fact, been mired in controversy since it quietly launched on all India's major satellite service providers 10 days ago.
Despite it being unveiled on Twitter on the official account of Mr Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Mr Modi himself told a local news station that "I am told some people have launched a channel though I have not had time to see it myself".
There is no information on who owns the channel or even from where they are sourcing their content.
On Tuesday... Rahul Gandhi faced an unusual battle
What happened?
India's main opposition leader, Rahul Gandhi, is up against candidates who have the same name as him - well, almost.
He will be running against a 30-year-old local politician named Raghul Gandhi in Wayanad in the southern state of Kerala.
But there is a third candidate named Rahul Gandhi who has also thrown his hat in to the ring.
Why does this matter?
Rival parties are known to put up candidates with similar or same names to confuse voters, says BBC Hindi's Imran Qureshi, adding that this happens frequently in other constituencies as well.
But Raghul Gandhi told the BBC that he was not in the race because his name was uncannily similar to that of his rival. Both filed their nomination papers on 4 April.
"He is a national leader and I am a small state-level leader. I am a serious candidate," he said.
The BBC was unable to contact the third candidate.
Wayanad is considered a Congress party stronghold - so it may not be unusual to find people named after party leaders. Raghul Gandhi's father was a member of the party and his sister is named Indira, after the former prime minister.
Does Raghul Gandhi think he will win? "I expect to get my money back. For that, I should get one third of the votes of the winning candidate. That will be victory for me," he said.
Former finance minister: 'India can afford minimum income scheme'
What is happening?
In an interview with BBC Tamil, India's former finance minister P Chidambaram has defended his opposition Congress party's pledge to create "the world's largest minimum income scheme".
The scheme, which is called Nyay (Justice), guarantees a basic income of 72,000 rupees ($1,035; £791) yearly to 50 million of India's poorest families. At an estimated cost of $52bn, it's Congress' biggest offering to voters so far.
"We now have the capacity to implement a scheme of this nature," Mr Chidambaram said, adding that it was possible given India's GDP, its projected growth over the next five years and the total expenditure by central and state governments.
"We could not have done this 20 years ago. We could not have done it even 10 years ago. But today we believe India has the capacity to directly address the issue of poverty among the bottom 20% of Indian people," he said.
Why is this important?
Since the Congress party released details about the scheme last month in its manifesto, opponents have questioned how the party plans to fund such a mammoth scheme.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley slammed the party over its pledge, calling it a "bluff announcement".
"A party with such a terrible track record of poverty alleviation has no right to make lofty assurances," Mr Jaitley told reporters on 24 March.
At a rally in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, PM Narendra Modi also attacked the scheme - referring to it as a a "big scam".
Others in the governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have said that India's poor are already receiving more support under existing schemes.
But given the scale of the Congress' scheme, it is likely to capture the imagination of voters - and the BJP could see that as a threat.
India votes 2019
On Monday, the BJP released its election manifesto
What happened?
The governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) released its election manifesto, which promised a slew of welfare schemes to India's farmers - a key vote bank in a country where nearly half the population is engaged in agriculture.
It promises to expand a farmers' income scheme that targeted only small farmers (those who owned up to two hectares of land) to include all farmers in the country - they would each receive 6,000 rupees ($86; £66) yearly.
The manifesto pledges to provide a pension for small farmers and traders; and the party has renewed its earlier promise of doubling farmers' incomes by 2022.
National security is a major part of the manifesto - India's home minister Rajnath Singh repeatedly referred to India's "zero tolerance against terror" while speaking after the manifesto was released.
The document includes other welfare measures, from permanent housing for the poor to piped water in every household to water management and recycling.
Why does this matter?
It isn't surprising that the BJP manifesto targets farmers because Indian agriculture, blighted by a depleting water table and declining productivity, is in crisis. And protests by farmers have regularly made headlines in the past five years.
Like the Congress, the BJP has also promised to reserve 33% of seats in the parliament and state legislatures for women. Both parties had committed to this ahead of past elections as well.
Some have said the manifesto makes no major promises or announcements that will be hard to deliver.
The BJP's manifesto also underlines some of the party's core pledges, which are popular with its right-wing supporters. These include cancelling the "special status" granted to Kashmir by the Constitution; and building a Hindu temple at a disputed site where a mosque once stood but was demolished by Hindu mobs in the early 1990s.
Coverage from previous weeks:
Ask a question
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After the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, Osama Bin Laden was forced to flee the city of Kandahar, where he had been based since 1997. Several compounds were hastily vacated, including one, opposite the Taliban foreign ministry, where al-Qaeda bigwigs met. Inside it, 1,500 cassettes were waiting to be discovered. | By Richard Fenton-SmithBBC News
Picking through the ransacked property, an Afghan family found this haul of audio tapes, which they swiftly removed and took to a local cassette shop - with the Taliban now gone, there was money to be made producing previously banned pop music, and these were ripe for wiping and filling with the hit songs of the day.
But a cameraman working for CNN heard about the haul, and convinced the shop owner to hand the tapes back, saying what they contained could be important. He was right. This was, after all, al-Qaeda's own audio library.
The tapes eventually made their way to the Afghan Media Project at Williams College in Massachusetts, who asked Flagg Miller - an expert in Arabic literature and culture from the University of California, Davis - to immerse himself in this hotchpotch of sermons, songs and recordings of intimate conversations. He is still the only person to have heard the collection in full.
"It was totally overwhelming," says Miller, recalling the day he received two dusty boxes of tapes back in 2003.
"I didn't sleep for three days just thinking about what would be required [to] make sense of it."
More than a decade on, Miller has written a book about his findings, titled The Audacious Ascetic, which explores this unique collection. The tapes date back to the late 1960s through to 2001 and feature more than 200 different speakers - Osama Bin Laden among them.
He is first heard in a tape from 1987 - a recording of a battle between Afghan-Arab mujahideen and Soviet Spetsnaz commandos. Bin Laden had left his home in Saudi Arabia, where he had been brought up in luxury, to make a name for himself fighting Afghanistan's infidel invaders.
"Bin Laden wanted to create an image of an effective militant - no easy job, because he was known as a bit of a dandy, who wore designer desert boots," says Miller.
"But he was very sophisticated at self-marketing, and the audio tapes in this collection are very much part of that story - the myth-making."
The collection also features speeches given by Bin Laden in the late 1980s and early 1990s to audiences in Saudi Arabia and Yemen.
"What's fascinating is how Bin Laden is speaking about the ways in which the Arabian Peninsula is threatened - but who is the enemy? It's not the United States, as we often think, or the West. It's other Muslims," says Miller.
While the US would eventually become Bin Laden's prime target, there is almost no reference to "the far enemy" in these early speeches. For several years he was much more concerned with what he called "disbelief" among Muslims who did not adhere to his strict, literalist interpretation of Islam.
"They are Shia first and foremost. They are Iraqi Baathists. They are Communists and Egyptian Nasserists," explains Miller.
"Bin Laden wanted to bring jihad to the question of who is a true Muslim."
Audio cassettes were the perfect tool for proselytising and propaganda - it's no wonder Bin Laden was a fan. They could be shared easily - dubbed, or passed from hand to hand - and censors paid little or no attention to them. They were also hugely popular in the Middle East and Arab world, where people would often listen to them, together with friends, formulating revolutionary ideas.
While sermons and speeches dominate this collection, there are curiosities, too. Among them is a conversation with a genie - or Jinni, in Arabic - who has taken over the body of a man. Speaking through him, he claims to have knowledge of political plots, although Bin Laden is said to have had no time for such superstition.
There's also a recording of Afghan-Arab fighters - Arabs fighting in Afghanistan against the Soviet invasion force - having breakfast at a training camp in late 1980s. This candid conversation reveals the humdrum nature of life on the front line. The conversation is dominated by the yearning for a good meal and the culinary delights of "Mr Hellfire" - a famous chef in Mecca, known for his delicious desserts.
There are also hours of Islamic anthems - songs featuring dramatised battles, and musical messages for aspiring Mujahideen. A key recruitment tool.
"For many, this is the way into jihad - through the heart," says Miller.
"These songs have an emotional draw, bringing home the sound of combat many would read about and see on TV - there's something intimate about hearing them in your headphones because they really play on your imagination."
What about Phil Collins? Any Fleetwood Mac or the Rolling Stones? Unfortunately not - but Western pop music does make an appearance in the form of Gaston Ghrenassia, who usually performed as Enrico Macias, an Algerian Jew who first found fame in France, before achieving worldwide success in the 1960s and 70s.
"I think this collection of French songs reveal the extent to which Afghan-Arabs in Kandahar spoke many languages, and had many world experiences. Many had lived in the West for long periods and it can't be said enough that they had led multiple lives," says Miller.
"These songs suggest that that someone, at some point in their life, was enjoying the songs of this Algerian Jew - and may have continued to enjoy them despite other struggles that clearly would have suggested doing so was heresy."
Another unexpected name to make an appearance in the tapes is Mahatma Gandhi, who is cited as an inspiration by Osama Bin Laden in a speech made in September 1993.
This is also the first speech in the collection in which Bin Laden calls on supporters to take action against the US… by boycotting its goods.
"Consider the case of Great Britain, an empire so vast that some say the sun never set on it," says Bin Laden.
"Britain was forced to withdraw from one of its largest colonies when Gandhi the Hindu declared a boycott against their goods. We must do the same thing today with America."
Bin Laden also encourages his audience to write letters to US embassies, to raise concern about America's role in the Middle East conflict. Still no mention of violence against America.
"That changes in 1996, days after he is exiled from Sudan," says Miller.
"Under US pressure he is stripped of his Saudi citizenship in 1994 and he has also lost all of his money and so he's at his wits end. And so Bin Laden has to come up with something desperate to galvanise his extremist supporters, and that's done in his 1996 speech from Tora Bora."
Holed up in the Hindu Kush, this speech is often called Bin Laden's declaration of war - but having gone through a complete recording of the speech found in the collection, Miller says this is not entirely accurate.
"The last third of this speech is 15 poems, and many times when this speech is translated, the poetry gets dropped out. Because of this, we don't appreciate the extent to which this speech wasn't a declaration of war, as it was framed by the media at the time.
"It's about the urgency of taking on the United States, but in light of a far greater struggle - the struggle against Saudi corruption."
It's only in one of the final recordings found in the collection that there is any allusion to 9/11, in a recording of the wedding of Osama Bin Laden's bodyguard, Umar, which was taped a few months before the attacks on New York City and Washington DC.
"There's a lot of mirth on the tape and then Bin Laden comes up, and it's no longer mirth. He talks about how celebration is important, but it mustn't overshadow more austere issues."
Bin Laden then makes an ominous reference.
"He talks explicitly about 'a plan' - he doesn't reveal details - and how we are 'about to hear news' and he asks God to 'grant our brothers success'," says Miller.
"I understand that to signify the 9/11 attacks [because] he is talking specifically about the United States at that juncture."
It's curious that across more than a decade of recordings which feature Osama Bin Laden, the thing he is most commonly associated with - terrorist violence against the West - gets such little mention.
"Al-Qaeda's primary enemy on most of these tapes, most of the time, is Muslim leaders," says Miller.
"Al-Qaeda's continued presence in Yemen, its effects in Iraq, and its ongoing devastation of Muslim lives in the Muslim world only confirms the fact that this organisation, this idea, claims many bloody paths.
"There is nothing inevitable about 9/11 on these tapes. It was hard working on these tapes to remind myself of that."
You can hear the documentary The Bin Laden Tapes on BBC Radio 4 on Monday, 17 August at 20:00 BST and on the BBC World Service from Tuesday, 18 August. Or catch up afterwards on iPlayer.
Flagg Miller is the author of The Audacious Ascetic
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The underwear bomb that surfaced in Yemen this month has reignited concern that al-Qaeda's bomb-makers are finding innovative ways to hide explosive devices - even placing them within the body. How worried should we be? | By Gordon CoreraSecurity correspondent, BBC News
A body cavity device would be just the latest chapter in the deadly cat and mouse game played between al-Qaeda and Western security officials when it comes to aviation. The terror group has consistently sought out new means of evading airport security regimes.
After the use of box cutters and hijackings on 9/11, cockpit security was enhanced.
But only a few months later, a shoe bomb nearly brought down a plane - and the introduction of security checks on footwear. By 2006 al-Qaeda had moved on to developing bombs made out of fluids, in turn leading to restrictions on liquids in hand luggage. In 2009, an underwear bomb worn by a young Nigerian nearly brought down a flight to Detroit.
A few months before that incident, a young man had offered to surrender to Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, who runs Saudi Arabia's counter-terror operations. He insisted that he wanted to do so in person. When he met the prince at his villa in Jeddah, a phone call triggered a hidden bomb.
The bomber's body was flung in all directions and part of his arm was embedded into the ceiling but remarkably, the prince was not seriously hurt. The exact nature of the device has been the source of some dispute, with some claiming it was internally placed in the rectum, others that it was an underwear bomb.
The bomber, Abdullah al-Asiri, was carrying a device believed to have been built by his brother Ibraham al-Asiri, al-Qaeda's master bomb-maker in Yemen and arguably the most dangerous and most wanted al-Qaeda associate individual globally. He is credited with a number of innovative devices ranging from the underwear bombs to the devices hidden in printer cartridges bound for the US on cargo flights (which were only discovered thanks to an intelligence tip-off).
On Monday, the group showed how deadly its devices could be when a suicide bomber killed close to 100 soldiers in Sanaa.
A detailed 2011 report by Dr Robert J Bunker, of Claremont Graduate University, argues that the trend is moving bombs closer to the body - and the logical extreme is to place bombs inside the body.
Drug smugglers frequently hide packages in body cavities such as the lower digestive tract. And in World War II, the forerunner of the CIA hid escape kits within the rectum.
"If you go back in the military history literature, the placing of explosive booby traps such as fragmentation grenades under, and even inside of, the corpses of soldiers is a very common phenomenon," Bunker says. "This was especially evident in the Pacific Theatre in World War II and in the Vietnam War."
One step beyond inserting a bomb in a body cavity is to undergo a medical procedure and open someone up, place the bomb inside their body and sew them up again. This has been attempted with animals. In 2010, al-Qaeda in Iraq reportedly surgically implanted bombs into dogs in order to send the canines on planes to the US on which they would explode. In this case, the animals died before the plan could be carried out.
Surgically inserting a bomb requires considerably medical skill, and al-Qaeda bomb-maker al-Asiri has reportedly been working with doctors to see if it can be done.
"The surgeon would open the abdominal cavity and literally implant the explosive device in amongst the internal organs," Dr Mark Melrose told ABC News. Other reports suggest devices could be placed in the breasts of female bombers much like an implant.
However, one Gulf-based security expert says he has seen no evidence to support reports of doctors working on surgically-implanted bombs.
So could such bombs be developed? The underwear bombs seized in 2009 and 2012 have no metal components and so can pass through metal detectors. After the underwear plot of 2009, there was pressure to introduce more body scanners at airports. Despite the objections of travellers who felt the images invaded their privacy, these machines have been introduced at some airports in the US and Europe. But in some parts of the world - notably the Middle East - they are barely used at all.
While scanners may be able to pick up the type of concealed underwear bomb used in 2009, they may not pick up a device within the body. How else might such a bomb be detected?
A medical X-ray machine might do it (just as it can pick up drugs hidden within the body), but concerns would be raised about exposing travellers to this level of radiation.
Testing for explosive residue is another option, but careful bomb-makers leave precious little contamination.
More emphasis may need to be placed in future on looking for suspicious behaviour at airports and forms of "soft" interrogation by security personnel - a tactic Israel has used.
But while al-Qaeda may want to use this type of bomb, one security source tells me it may not be so easy to carry out in practice. Would a bomber with a device sewn into their body be fit to travel, and without exhibiting signs of recent surgery?
Bomb-makers would also face the problem, experts say, of working out how much of the explosion the body itself would absorb. This may have been what saved Prince Nayef - it's possible that most of the blast was absorbed by his attacker's body, or the impact travelled into the floor. This may make the body bomb less useful as a tool for assassination. But in a plane, all that may be needed is an explosion just strong enough to punch a hole in a pressurised cabin.
But the main challenge in such bombs, experts say, is detonation. If a timer is sewn into the body with the device, then what could the bomber do if the flight is delayed?
The 2009 underwear bomb was thought to have used a chemical detonator delivered by syringe, but this failed to work and instead just burned the bomber.
The 2012 version is thought to have this element upgraded, but the details have not been made public. And if a bomb is placed internally, rather than worn, it would be even harder to ensure a syringe hits the right point.
Detonation through a phone call (as used in Jeddah against Prince Nayef) is an option, but only if you can guarantee phone coverage in flight, which is not always the case.
The body bomb may so far be an unproven concept but al-Qaeda - and particularly its affiliate in Yemen - has shown itself to be unrelenting in its desire to strike the US, and especially planes.
It has also shown itself remorselessly innovative in the search for new ways to achieve its deadly goals.
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Pakistan's Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani has proved himself to be a wily and resilient political operator who up until June 2012 had persistently defied his critics and the might of the judiciary to cling onto his job. | But it appears that defiance has finally came to an end with his shock disqualification from office by Pakistan's Supreme Court.
Its announcement came two months after it convicted the premier of contempt because of his refusal to ask Swiss authorities to reopen corruption cases against President Asif Ali Zardari.
Mr Gilani's strategy of not appealing against his conviction so as not to antagonise the court appears to have failed.
His determination to stand up for himself helped Mr Gilani grow in stature in the eyes of many Pakistanis.
He became the longest-serving prime minister in the history of Pakistan, where civilian governments have been repeatedly overthrown by the powerful military, often with the support of the Supreme Court.
When he was appointed to the job in March 2008 many commentators did not expect his tenure would be long. But he repeatedly rose to the challenge and fended off his critics.
In April 2012, Mr Gilani seemed in a stronger position than at any point during his confrontation with the Supreme Court.
Although he was found guilty of contempt, the court gave him only a symbolic sentence and he did not have to serve any time in jail. The prime minister had argued that the president, who rejects the charges, had immunity as head of state.
In April, the court in effect backed down from its efforts to remove the elected prime minister, and its symbolic judgement and token sentence were seen as something of a personal victory for Mr Gilani - the judiciary, the army and the opposition had apparently failed in their efforts to remove him.
It is not clear whether Mr Gilani will now try to appeal against his disqualification. The ruling Pakistan People's Party should have the necessary majority in parliament to elect a new prime minister.
In spite of his conviction, Mr Gilani emerged from his trial with his reputation enhanced, having succeeded in portraying himself as a man defending democracy in the face of a politically motivated campaign against him and his government.
Throughout his time in office it was clear that whatever the criticisms levelled at him - from poor governance to corruption - no party wanted to be seen as the one to bring down yet another elected government in Pakistan.
Supporters said that his long period as PM reflected Mr Gilani's sound political judgement and staying power.
He refrained from followed the bidding of former President Pervez Musharraf, despite heavy pressure by his government to coerce him into joining many of his Pakistan People's Party (PPP) colleagues in switching sides.
Mr Gilani's refusal to do a deal with Mr Musharraf is much admired within his party.
He went to jail in 2001, serving five years following a conviction over illegal government appointments that were alleged to have taken place during his term as Speaker of parliament between 1993-96.
A tall, softly-spoken man with an air of authority, he has acquired a reputation for doing the right thing.
Political family
Yousuf Raza Gilani was born on 9 June 1952 in Karachi in the southern province of Sindh, but his family comes from Punjab.
The Gilanis are among the most prominent of landowners and spiritual leaders in the south of Punjab province. Their home town is the ancient city of Multan.
The family's prominence naturally led to its members vying for political power.
Mr Gilani's grandfather and great-uncles joined the All India Muslim League and were signatories of the 1940 Pakistan resolution. This was the declaration which eventually led to partition.
His father, Alamdar Hussain Gilani, served as a provincial minister in the 1950s.
Mr Gilani joined up in 1978 when he became a member of the Muslim League's central leadership.
This was soon after he completed his MA in journalism at the University of Punjab. His first term as a public servant was as a nominee of General Zia-ul-Haq.
The then Pakistan army chief had been the country's dictator since overthrowing elected Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto in a 1977 coup.
Mr Bhutto was executed in 1979, an act that forever soured the relationship between the army and the PPP.
Figurehead
Mr Gilani joined Mr Bhutto's PPP in 1988, months before Gen Zia's death brought an end to its political exile.
Observers say it is his loyalty and his disdain for politicking within the party that earned him the nomination for prime minister.
"[Mr Gilani] was perhaps the only man among the top leadership who did not badger Zardari for this or any other position," says one PPP insider. "This along with the fact of his proven loyalty, earned him the nod."
But it was his independent thinking that won him many admirers after taking over as the country's chief executive.
Correspondents say his first few months were uncomfortable, with many doubting whether he had the charisma and standing to lead the country.
This feeling was strengthened when Mr Zardari, the PPP chairman, was elected president.
It was felt Mr Zardari would now take a more hands-on approach to government - leaving Mr Gilani as little more than a figurehead.
That did not happen and Mr Gilani grew in stature as his term progressed.
He had to contend with some of the worst crises in Pakistan's history, including extensive flooding, rising Taliban militancy and deteriorating relations with the US after the killing of al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden.
Related Internet Links
National Assembly of Pakistan
Pakistan People's Party
The New York Times
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The North Coast 500 is one of Scotland's most scenic routes, but some communities on it worry the experience is at risk due to a lack of public toilet provision. BBC Scotland's Iain MacInnes travelled the route to investigate the growing row. | The NC500 route is hotting up again this year, bringing thousands of visitors to the winding roads of the north Highlands.
For tourists and locals alike - as for us all - there is sometimes the need to stop and spend a penny.
But under Highland Council plans to close a number of toilets in the region, already short on provision, that could become a bit more of an issue.
Sarah Macleod, of the Shore Caravan Site in Achmelvich, says tourists are "appalled" by the level of public conveniences in the area.
She says: "A lot of them have kids with them, and there are elderly tourists as well.
"The tourists are concerned and I think it would stop a lot of them coming to our areas if they could not stop somewhere and use the facilities."
Across the Highlands, 29 toilets are threatened with closure, many on the NC500 between Ullapool and Kinlochbervie, including those which are open seasonally at the award-winning Achmelvich Beach.
"There are people coming to this beach all year round," says Sarah.
"The toilets should be open at other times as well because I don't want to know what they are doing otherwise."
'Fantastic opportunity'
She adds: "When the toilets weren't open last year there was a lot of not very nice things behind the toilets. It was disgusting."
Highland Council says that they face difficult decisions and want to see more communities take on the toilets and run them for themselves.
Allan Henderson, chairman of environment, development and infrastructure at the local authority, says: "For the communities that have been doing this for a number of years it is not a major problem."
He said having communities take over the running of toilets, means savings can be made that protected other council services and staff, including street cleaners and special needs assistants.
Some in the region accept that changes are required but, although the consultation on the closure has been extended until the end of October, feel more time and consideration is needed.
Tanja Lister, owner of the Kylesku Hotel, says: "There is a fantastic opportunity for us to really look at this and I would agree there are probably ways in which we could reduce the cost of running these toilets.
"We could be extremely organised, instead what has happened is that there has been this reactionary decision pushed through at break-neck speed.
"I would ask for an immediate stop to the threat to close these toilets at the end of October because fundamentally that is too short a space for us to come up with any kind of good outcome."
'Handled badly in beginning'
Ian Munro, of the Kinlochbervie Fish Selling Company and life-long resident of Kinlochbervie, says those behind the moves to shut toilets "must not have any bowel problems in their lives".
He says: "I used to drive fish lorries and for a period of my life 15 years ago I had chronic bout of ulcerative colitis and I depended on public toilets a lot.
"It is not a very nice thing to talk about, but it is a real part of life."
Highland Council accepts that mistakes have been made in the process, but insists that communities need to play a part to keep toilets in the area open.
Councillor Linda Munro, who represents Sutherland, says: "Hands up, we handled this badly in the beginning.
"We got it absolutely wrong the way the information went out, but we need to move on from there.
"We are striving to keep key toilets open, but still wanting the communities to work with us."
Many communities say that the toilets - in their current state - would be a liability and not an asset, as the council insist.
However, as things pan out, the toilet network on the route looks set to be very different in the coming years.
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About £250,000 of computer equipment was stolen after a man scaled a five-storey warehouse and broke in through the roof. | Police were called to the break-in at the building in Nasmyth Road in Daventry in the early hours of Monday.
A man was found hiding from officers in the warehouse and was arrested.
Northamptonshire Police said they searched a wooded area close to the scene and retrieved laptops and tablets worth about £250,000.
The 32-year-old was arrested on suspicion of burglary and remains in custody.
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Onions are eaten and grown in more countries than any other vegetable but rarely seem to receive much acclaim. It's time to stop taking the tangy, tear-inducing bulb for granted and give it a round of applause, writes the BBC's Marek Pruszewicz. | Deep in the archives of Yale University's Babylonian Collection lie three small clay tablets with a particular claim to fame - they are the oldest known cookery books.
Covered in minute cuneiform writing, they did not give up their secrets until 1985, nearly 4,000 years after they were written.
The French Assyriologist and gourmet cook Jean Bottero - a combination only possible in France, some might say - was the man who cracked them. He discovered "a cuisine of striking richness, refinement, sophistication and artistry" with many flavours we would recognise today. Especially one flavour.
"They seem obsessed with every member of the onion family!" says Bottero.
Mesopotamians knew not just their onions, but also their leeks, garlic and shallots.
And this devotion to the humble bulb is shared by most subsequent cooks too - rare is the cookery book that that is onion-free.
It's the world's most ubiquitous foodstuff. The UN estimates that at least 175 countries produce an onion crop, well over twice as many as grow wheat, the largest global crop by area harvested.
And unlike wheat, the onion is a staple of every major cuisine - it's arguably the only truly global ingredient.
"We think that based on genetic analysis onions came from central Asia, so they are already far afield by the time the Mesopotamians are using them. There's also very early evidence of their use in Europe back to the Bronze Age," says food historian Laura Kelley, author of The Silk Road Gourmet.
"They are a very pretty flower, so it could be someone thought, 'These are gorgeous,' and then found they were also nutritious. They are very, very easy to grow... There's a very good chance of success and very few pests."
Without doubt, onions would have been traded along the Silk Road as far back as 2,000BC, around the time the Mesopotamians were writing down their onion-rich recipes, Kelley says.
Mesopotamian wildfowl pie
Laura Kelley, author of the Silk Road Gourmet, has cooked some of the recipes in the Babylonian cuneiform cookery book, including this pie.
The original ingredients are: Fowl, water, milk, salt, fat, cinnamon, mustard greens, shallots, semolina, leeks, garlic, flour, brine, roasted dill seeds, mint and wild tulip bulbs, says Kelley. (NB the last ingredient can be toxic)
See Laura Kelley's step-by-step cooking guide
Today, though, there is little global trade in onions. About 90% are consumed in their country of origin. This may be why, in most parts of the world, onions generally escape much notice.
China and India dominate production and consumption - between them they account for about 45% of the world's annual production of more than 70 million tonnes.
Neither country is among the top onion-eating nations, however, measured by the quantity of onions eaten per head of population. The global champion in this regard is Libya, where in 2011 each person ate, on average, 33.6kg of onion, according to the UN.
"We cook up onions with everything," a Libyan friend tells me. Some even consider macaroni or couscous with onion the national dish.
Kelley points out that a lot of West African cultures eat "huge amounts of onions", though none of them makes it into the UN's top 10.
"There's a Senegalese dish called Yassa, which has a huge amount relative to the amount of meat or veg - it's onions with onions," she says. The Senegalese ate 21.7kg per head in 2011, according to the UN data, more than twice as much as Britons, who got through around 9.3kg per head.
Extended family
From top left, clockwise: Garlic - Allium sativum, Onion - Allium cepa, Leek - Allium ampeloprasum, Chives - Allium schoenoprasum, Shallot - Allium cepa var. aggregatum, Spring onion (scallion) - various cultivars of Allium cepa, but also some other species
The French, whom the British like to think of as big onion eaters, in fact made do with a modest 5.6kg each.
One country where onions do make headlines, is India - if the price goes up too fast, there will be trouble.
Within a month of being sworn in as India's new prime minister in May, Narendra Modi's government intervened to stop onions being exported too cheaply, fearing a rise in domestic prices. Four years ago the government of the day halted all exports, and even imported onions, to prevent street protests.
"There is no established causal relationship, but anecdotally it is true that onion price spikes have become important election issues from time to time," says Pranjul Bhandari, HSBC's chief India economist.
Perhaps the most notable impact was in 1998, when the defeat of the governing BJP party in Delhi state elections was put down to the rise in onion prices.
The reason for their political importance is that onions form "an integral part of almost every Indian household's life", according to Bhandari.
"Barring a few exceptions, no Indian meal is complete without onions as an ingredient. As a result, changes in the price of onions are felt every day by the common man," she says.
In the UK, an onion shortage is less likely to cause disturbances, but growers go to some lengths to ensure a steady supply throughout the year.
"Harvest will run through July to September - we know they are ready when they fall over," says Sam Rix, a third-generation onion farmer, growing, packing and supplying onions near Colchester in Essex.
"The onions are stored in warm air at 28C for three weeks to dry them and to help them develop that golden colour. Then they are gradually cooled down to around zero degrees," he says.
"Eleven weeks after harvest the onions will naturally want to grow. It's a race against time to prevent that."
The bulbs are then kept chilled at fridge-like temperatures in warehouses about the size and height of a secondary school sports hall for months on end.
Although this isn't cheap, it helps ensure that something like 90% of the crop gets to market.
Improvements in storage, and the breeding of increasingly hardy varieties means that producers like Rix are now within reach of a tantalising goal - being able to store onions right through until the following year's harvest begins.
"Last year we went into the middle of July with onions that we harvested in September," he says.
He imported onions - from New Zealand and Spain - for just three weeks of the year.
The packing operation, meanwhile, works 363 days out of 365, closing only for Christmas Day and Easter Sunday.
There is a small spike in demand at Christmas - perhaps because few turkey stuffings are made without an onion, or perhaps simply because people eat more at Christmas than at other times of year.
But it turns out that bigger spikes in British onion demand coincide with other religious festivals - Diwali and Eid.
As you might expect, the world's most global ingredient is also its most multicultural.
Sliced and diced
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Sometimes attack is the best form of defence and this bold move should be seen as a response to threats in the market from a resurgent Tesco's move into wholesaling, the rise of the discounters Aldi and Lidl and of course Amazon - which has the UK grocery market in its sights. | Simon JackBusiness editor@BBCSimonJackon Twitter
This bigger is better strategy is primarily based on the increased buying power a combined Sainsbury and Asda will have with suppliers. Sainsbury's boss Mike Coupe is promising a 10% reduction in price on regular staples for customers of both stores.
However, one supplier to Asda who spoke to the BBC was sceptical that big price savings could be achieved.
"Does [Mike Coupe] seriously think that Sainsbury's and Asda's buyers have been so bad at getting good prices that he can magic up savings of 10%?"
Mike Coupe told me that although the two companies are forbidden by competition law to compare buying prices, a third party analysis said that the stores paid different prices for some goods and where that happens, the combined group would try to move both to the lower price.
Mammoth task
Does that mean that customers will pay the same price in both stores for the same product? Not necessarily says Coupe.
He conceded that the stores' brands are different and appeal to different customers - precisely why they are going to keep them running side by side. How shoppers at Sainsbury's will respond to the prospect of being charged more for the same item than Asda customers will be interesting to watch.
To integrate these two businesses will be a mammoth task - which will involve migrating Asda logistical processes onto Sainsbury's systems. A commitment not to cut in-store jobs still leaves jobs in other functions vulnerable if the company is to hit its target of cutting £500m pounds in costs. Its hard to imagine that the tie-up won't see cuts in buying, logistics and head office functions.
There is still a long way to go before this ambitious deal is done. Even if competition watchdogs give it the green light, Mike Coupe doesn't expect the deal to be sealed until 2019.
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Canadian explorers have drawn a blank in the latest hunt for the remains of Captain Sir John Franklin's fatal expedition, 160 years after he took 129 men deep into the Arctic. But will the mystery of the doomed crew ever be unravelled?
| By Kate DaileyBBC News Magazine
In 1845, Capt Franklin, an officer in the British Royal Navy, took two ships and 129 men towards the Northwest Territories in an attempt to map the Northwest Passage, a route that would allow sailors to travel from the Atlantic to the Pacific via the icy Arctic circle.
Stocked with provisions that could last for seven years, and outfitted with the latest technology and experienced men, the two ships - HMS Erebus and HMS Terror - were some of the biggest, strongest, vessels ever to make the journey.
But the men vanished into the frozen Arctic, leaving a few clues but no explanation as to what went wrong.
The first search party set off in 1848 and searches involving teams from Canada, the UK, and the US have continued ever since. Last week, representatives from Parks Canada announced the results from their search this summer, which proved unsuccessful.
"What people have been looking for has changed. We've given up looking for survivors, we've given up looking for bodies. Now we're just looking for any answers," says William Battersby, who wrote the biography of James Fitzjames, the captain of the Erebus.
"The extraordinary thing is that despite all this effort, after 160 years and by thousands of people, we still don't know where the ships are, and what happened on the expedition, or what happened to most of the men."
Scattered remains
Explorers have found rock cairns with messages from sailors who abandoned ship. They've taken oral history from Inuit people whose ancestors saw the ships get stuck in giant ice floes. In several cases, they've dug up the bones and preserved bodies of the ship's crew. But they've found no ships, no logs, and no sign of Franklin himself.
In subsequent years, a rough sketch of the troubles emerged. During the first winter, the crew disembarked, travelled south to hunt. Franklin left a reassuring message in a rock cairn, signed "All well". A month later, he was dead.
A year later, the crew returned to the cairn and updated the note. By that time, 15 sailors had died.
"If it had just been that, it would have been one of the biggest disasters of Arctic exploration," says Ted Betts, a Toronto lawyer and author of the blog Franklin's Ghost. But it wasn't just that.
From that time on, things only got worse. The men, sickened from scurvy, tuberculosis and lead poisoning, got weaker and weaker. They reportedly abandoned ship in 1848, only to meet a cold death elsewhere.
In 1859, an explorer sent by Franklin's wife travelled to the spot where the ships had been abandoned. He didn't find the Terror or the Erebus. Instead, he found a small whaleboat, full of books, chocolates, and the skeletons of two sailors.
The boat, says Russell Potter, professor of English at Rhode Island College, was pointed towards where the abandoned ship once sat.
"Maybe they weren't trying to get away, but to get back to their ship and die in comfort," he says. "It's a very poignant arrangement."
Two other locations offered a concentrated amount of remains, says Battersby. "They do seem to be associated with men who just abandoned ship, gave up hope of ever being rescued, and sadly, gradually, cannibalised the bodies of their comrades."
A few fully-preserved corpses have been found in the snow as well. But the bodies of others, including Franklin, are missing.
"They simply disappeared. It's like Apollo 13 went around the moon and never came back again," says Battersby.
"They never had a date of death, a place of death. They're immortals who are trapped between life and death. Are they ghosts? How long did the last one live? We just don't know."
Desolate and desperate
For Ron Carlson, a Chicago architect and licensed bush pilot, it's easy for him to understand why, after all these years, the ships are still missing - and how desolate the last days must have been for men on that doomed ship.
"It's vast. When I flew, I could look out over Victoria Strait and see 50 miles of ice pack in all directions," he says. "It's like the surface of the moon, but without any marks."
The broad and punishing size of the search area dwarfs the high-tech equipment and meticulous research used by the Parks Canada team, and the other explorers before them.
"Both of the ships were caught in the ice for two years but slowly drifting south in a very large body of water," says Marc-Andre Bernier, chief of underwater archaeology services at Parks Canada.
That could mean that the ships are hundreds of miles apart. "For us, it's just as important to know where they're not," he says, so that future searches can start fresh.
For sailors on the Terror and Erebus, the barren landscape and dim prospects possibly only added to an increasing sense of foreboding.
"It seems very clear from several sources that the men on these ships suffered from terrible lead poisoning, which leads to depression," says Battersby, who read the records from an earlier trip by the Terror to the Arctic.
"The account of the Terror's voyage of that year says how bad the atmosphere was, how demoralised people were and how depressed they all were."
Battersby believes that the ships themselves, which had an internal pipe system to melt ice and provide fresh water, was the source of the poison.
Finding the ships could prove this theory. It would also bring to a close a search first launched in the time of Queen Victoria. But it wouldn't end the mystery.
"It's really just the beginning," says Betts. The papers, artifacts, and infrastructure will provide a whole new raft of information and leads - and more fodder for followers of the Franklin expedition's sad fate.
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Two men and a woman have been arrested on suspicion of falsely imprisoning a woman in Cardiff.
| South Wales Police said officers were called to reports of a "woman in distress" at about 06:40 GMT.
A 27-year-old woman and a 35-year-old man from Canton and a 38-year-old man from Gabalfa were taken into custody.
Police said the 24 year-old woman was "safe and well". The arrested trio been taken to Cardiff Bay police station where they will be questioned.
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A transgender prisoner has admitted sexually assaulting inmates at a women's jail. | Karen White, 51, who was born male but now identifies as a woman, has pleaded guilty to two counts of sexual touching at New Hall Prison, Wakefield.
The offences took place between September and November last year. She has since been moved to a male prison.
Details emerged when White appeared at Leeds Crown Court to admit to a rape committed outside prison.
White previously admitted two further rapes, which also happened outside jail.
More stories from Yorkshire
White will be sentenced for all offences on 11 October.
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NHS Grampian will publish only the recommendations from a report into general surgery at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary after taking legal advice, BBC Scotland can reveal. | The review was carried out by the Royal College of Surgeons of England at the request of the health board.
An expert group spent two days within the general surgery department.
The board has decided to release just the recommendations, and confirm what the remit of the review was.
BBC Scotland understands interim chief executive Malcolm Wright briefed general surgeons and board members on Friday.
Local politicians had demanded the report be published in full.
Meanwhile the findings of a separate investigation by Healthcare Improvement Scotland into patient care at the hospital is due to be published next week.
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More than £1m has been collected in fines from motorists caught driving in bus lanes in the last eight months in Plymouth, the city council has said. | Almost 39,000 fines have been issued since six CCTV cameras were installed in August, Plymouth City Council said.
Drivers who are caught face a £60 fixed penalty charge.
The authority said the money received was being "invested back into Plymouth's transport network and services".
In August, a council spokesman said the aim was to keep traffic flowing and make the roads safer.
The £60 fine, which is issued to motorists caught driving in the lanes, is halved if the charge is paid within 14 days of it being issued.
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Cemeteries offer a heady mix of history, beauty, nature and death to those who enjoy browsing around them. Burial grounds such as Highgate in north London, which host the graves of the rich and famous, draw thousands of visitors. But there are scores of other less well known but interesting graves around England. | By Bethan BellBBC News
The barmaid who taunted a tiger
In 1703, Hannah Twynnoy became Britain's first recorded victim of a tiger.
She was a barmaid at the White Lion in Malmesbury, Wiltshire, when a travelling menagerie set up in the pub's large rear yard, ready to attract paying crowds.
Hannah was warned against upsetting the tiger but she enjoyed bothering and poking at the big cat - until one day it discovered the cage door was open. Fed up of the pesky barmaid, the tiger launched itself on the unfortunate servant and mauled her to death.
The stone, in Malmesbury Abbey has the epitaph:
In bloom of life
She's snatched from hence
She had not room to make defence;
For Tyger fierce
Took life away
And here she lies
In a bed of clay
Until the Resurrection Day.
The diver who saved a cathedral
William Walker was a deep-sea diver who, in 1905, was employed to help repair the foundations of Winchester Cathedral.
Large cracks had appeared in the cathedral's walls and vaulted ceilings, some of which were wide enough for owls to roost in.
Because Winchester has a high underlying water table and the cathedral is built on peaty soil, trenches dug below filled with water before any reinforcing work could be done.
So Walker, who usually worked at Portsmouth dockyard, was recruited.
A tunnel was excavated beneath the building and for six years he spent nearly six hours a day underwater, in darkness, replacing and shoring up the foundations with his bare hands. He worked entirely by touch. Eventually he propped the cathedral up with 900,000 bricks, 114,900 concrete blocks and 25,800 bags of cement.
Because it took him so long to put on and take off his heavy diving suit, when he stopped for a break he would just take off his helmet in order to eat his lunch and smoke his pipe.
As if that was not enough effort, each weekend he cycled 150 miles - home to Croydon, south London, before returning to work on Monday.
He died aged 49 during the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918. His grave, at Beckenham Cemetery in Bromley, south-east London, bears the words: "The diver who with his own hands saved Winchester Cathedral."
The soldier whose beer was too weak
In Winchester, there is a grave which pays homage to a 26-year-old grenadier in the North Regiment of the Hants Militia. Thomas Thetcher died after drinking contaminated small (weak) beer when he was hot.
Before the invention of modern sanitation, people would drink small beer when fresh water was unavailable. This was because the alcohol was toxic to water-borne pathogens.
However, it was not enough to prevent Thetcher catching a fever and dying.
Following his death in 1764, his comrades arranged for a jocular headstone inscription warning of the dangers of drink. It read:
Here sleeps in peace a Hampshire Grenadier,
Who caught his death by drinking cold small beer,
Soldiers be wise from his untimely fall
And when ye're hot drink strong or none at all.
In 1918, the tombstone caught the attention of a young American soldier called Bill Wilson, who was camped nearby with his US Army unit.
Twenty-one years later, following a battle with alcoholism, he founded Alcoholics Anonymous and in 1939 published a book about his experience.
In it he claimed the gravestone had been an "ominous warning which I failed to heed", and printed the first two lines of the verse in the front of his book.
However, it appears he misunderstood the headstone, as he missed out the crucial advice about only drinking strong beer.
On 12 May - the anniversary of Thetcher's death - people gather at the grave to drink (strong) beer and raise a glass to the grenadier.
Peter the Wild Boy
Peter had been found living alone and naked in a German forest in 1725. He could not talk, and would scamper about on all fours rather than walk.
When he was about 12 he was brought to London by King George I where he became a "human pet" at Kensington Palace. However, his inability to learn table manners or speech, hatred of wearing clothes - even his specially-made green velvet suit - and lack of decorum led to him falling out of favour.
The court paid for him to retire to a Hertfordshire farm with a generous pension and when he died, aged about 72, the locals paid for a headstone. Even today, flowers are laid on his grave.
Peter's funeral was held at St Mary's Church, Northchurch, Hertfordshire, and was paid for by the government. His gravestone was provided by local people.
At the time, courtiers assumed Peter's behaviour was the result of being brought up by wolves or bears. However, modern analysis of a portrait suggests Peter had a rare genetic condition known as Pitt-Hopkins Syndrome.
The bleeding tombstone of Richard Smith
St Mary's Church in Hinckley, Leicestershire, is the last resting place of Richard Smith who was killed on 12 April 1727, aged 20.
Although his headstone is fairly run-of-the-mill, the story behind his death serves as an abject warning to young men with a fondness for messing about when they should be paying attention.
According to the local history club, a recruiting sergeant for the army had come to Hinckley and was singing the praises of taking the King's shilling. Richard, rather than listening, made jokes and quips until the recruiter lost his temper. In a slight overreaction, the soldier gave the crowd an unplanned demonstration in how to use a pike in close quarter combat - and killed Richard.
For years there were reports of the headstone appearing red and tradition held the gravestone sweated blood on the anniversary of the murder.
However, a more prosaic explanation was suggested by a researcher in 1936. The gravestone used to be positioned under a block of red sandstone and it was thought that the "blood" being sweated may have resulted in water dripping from this block.
The Woodplumpton Witch
Nestled among the neat headstones at St Anne's churchyard in Woodplumpton, near Preston, is a boulder marking the grave of Meg Shelton.
Known as "the Fylde Hag", she was accused of witchcraft in the late 17th Century. Allegations centred on the fairly tame "stealing milk" and the more-impressive "turning herself into a animal".
She was killed in mysterious circumstances when a barrel crushed her against the wall of her cottage.
Folklore has it she dug her way out of her grave on more than one occasion. She was eventually buried head down in a narrow shaft so that if she tried to claw her way out she would be heading in the wrong direction - and instead burrow her way to Hell.
The boulder was put on top as an extra way of keeping her anchored in the grave.
According to legend, if you walk three times around the boulder while chanting "I don't believe in witches", Meg's bony hand will rise from her grave and grasp your ankle.
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Two men have been charged following an alleged fireraising incident at a street in Arbroath. | The alleged incident took place in Sidney Street at about 05:00 on 5 October.
The two men, who are aged 22 and 19, are expected to appear at Dundee Sheriff Court later.
Detectives issued a description of suspects at the time and said that a 34-year-old householder was uninjured in the alleged incident.
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A deep sea monster has surfaced in County Kerry. | An extremely rare giant squid, which measures 5.8m (20ft) long, was landed by fishermen off the coast of Dingle on Monday.
The cephalopod catch is the first in 22 years and only the fifth documented sighting of the squid in Irish waters.
Marine Biologist Kevin Flannery described the specimen as a "legend of the sea".
"It's something rare, something wonderful and something unusual," Mr Flannery told BBC Radio Foyle.
"These things have been legends of the sea, when the trawl comes up and this 20ft arm comes out and sticks on to you - you'd get a bad fright!"
The squid was caught by fisherman Pete Flannery (no relation to Kevin), skipper of the Cú na Mara, near the Porcupine Basin, about 120 miles off the Dingle coast.
Incidentally, it was Mr Flannery's father who caught two other giant squid in the same waters, in 1995.
If you're counting, that makes the Flannerys responsible for landing 60% of all known giant squid in Ireland since 1673.
"His father caught two of them back in 1995, so maybe they're attached to them or something like that but I think it's to do with the area in which they fish," said Kevin Flannery.
Mr Flannery, who is director of Dingle's Ocean world Aquarium and the Explore Us Aquarium in Portaferry, said the current specimen will now be scientifically studied.
"Squid don't have a long lifespan, so obviously they must reproduce rapidly and have quite a number of offspring," he said.
"You can learn their growth patterns, what they feed on, what their size ratio is, if they're pregnant, what sex they are and we also keep some for DNA purposes as well to see if they're related to species off the coast of South Africa.
"I hope to bring some part of it (the squid) up to the aquarium up in Portaferry and let people see the suckers, because they have hundreds of these sucker nail type cutting discs that they attach to the great whales."
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You might expect anyone who learns their English from watching BBC One's EastEnders to pepper every other sentence with shouts of "Get outta my pub!", "You ain't my mother!" and the collected musings on life of that great sage, Mick Carter, as played by Danny Dyer. | Dominic CascianiHome affairs correspondent@BBCDomCon Twitter
But picking up English from the soap was about more than a string of one-liners for Farid Saleh when he arrived in the UK from Afghanistan as a child refugee. It was a route to a new life.
Farid's father had been killed in political violence and, as the oldest son, the 13-year-old was in danger. His family paid for him to get to the UK, where the scared and bewildered teenager was placed with a foster family.
"When I met my foster family it was challenging, I didn't know what they were saying," he says. "There would be days I would come home from school and say, 'I can't do this.'"
So every night his foster mother would sit with him and they'd watch EastEnders together with the subtitles on.
They would note new words and Farid would try to use them in sentences.
Slowly and steadily he stopped being a teenager lost in a foreign world and grew into a young man with a future.
You don't need to take my word for it. Farid speaks for himself in our film, although I should perhaps apologise for twisting his arm into saying the legendary "Get outta my pub!" line.
"EastEnders helped me to know what people were talking about at school," he says. "I was able to be part of that conversation."
Farid has done well for himself (more on that later) because he was well supported. But professionals say watching soaps is no substitute for proper tuition that can accelerate integration. The problem is, somebody has to pay for it.
Very few refugees have the means to do so until they get into work... and to get into work, they need to speak English. So the government funds English tuition.
But the charity Refugee Action says new research has uncovered what it says is a crisis in English classes that is preventing people from integrating.
The charity says tens of thousands of refugees in the UK are in a linguistic limbo as they wait to get on to courses, known as Esol, because of chronic underfunding.
The delays faced by women are even longer because they struggle to get childcare.
The system is "simply not fit for purpose", says Mariam Kemple Hardy of Refugee Action, adding that refugees are waiting up to three years to get classes.
"When you can't speak English, life can be extremely isolating. They can't make friends with their neighbours. It is incredibly hard to get a job, to become a real part of their community," she said.
"So learning English is a big part of rebuilding their lives in the UK. The government has to improve English language provision by increasing investment."
Funding for Esol comes from the Department for Education and stood at just over £200m eight years ago - since then it has fallen by half.
Natecla, which is the national association for teachers in the field, says that in 2008-09 there were 207,400 adults on courses.
That had fallen to 131,000 by 2014/15 - all during a period of high immigration - and it wants a new national strategy for England, like this in place in Wales and Scotland.
Who gets help with English lessons?
A Department for Education spokesman said: "We are committed to supporting all adults in England secure the English language skills they need for life and work. Adults who are granted refugee status are eligible for the same skills funding as any other English resident."
But the calls for better funding are not new - and not confined to lobby groups. They have also come from one of the government's top advisers.
The Casey Review into Opportunity and Integration, commissioned by former Prime Minister David Cameron, concluded last year that if people can't speak the language, they end up poorer, isolated and living in segregated communities.
It noted that over the course of two recent years more had been spent on Cornish than on English by the department responsible for integration. Ministers have promised to publish an integration strategy in the coming months.
There are many charities and volunteers who are trying to plug the gap in helping new refugees to integrate. Farid is one of them.
He is studying at university to become a social worker and also helping today's child refugees who feel as lost as he once did.
So what does he tell them?
"My advice would be to watch EastEnders - and a lot of TV," he smiles. "It will help you - put the subtitles on and watch them."
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The number of racing fans visiting the Isle of Man for the 2017 TT festival rose by 6% on the previous year, according to government figures. | The TT visitor survey showed that 45,054 people travelled to the island in June, compared with 42,420 in 2016.
The report estimates that the festival brought in about £24.6m to the Manx economy.
The recently-published research also indicated a 40% rise in the number of TT fans aged 18 or under.
Visitor numbers peaked on 4 June when there were about 26,600 tourists on the island, the survey said.
The date - known as Mad Sunday - gives visiting bikers the chance to ride the TT course, part of which is derestricted.
At its peak in 1913, the island's tourism industry attracted more than 660,000 people every year.
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At 0500 BST, about 30 seconds after an on-screen message saying UK viewers were watching Lost: Live from the US - its first and last simultaneous UK/US broadcast - another screen popped up reading Temporary Fault. | By Kev GeogheganEntertainment reporter, BBC News
Oops. Luckily the message lasted only a few seconds before normal service was resumed, and so began one of the most anticipated television finales in recent history.
Anticipated because in the six years since Lost began, it has had the power to enthral and infuriate in equal measure.
It launched with what is still the most expensive pilot episode in TV history.
The initial concept was pretty simple - a plane crashed on a mysterious island and the survivors soon found themselves locked in a constant battle against The Others - a hostile group of island residents and some kind of monster that lived in the bushes.
In series two, we found out that people had been on the island for some time and we learned all about the Dharma initiative.
All good so far but then the series seemed to lose its way when it started flashing forward to a future with a dead John Locke, a bitter drug-addicted Jack and the rest of the Oceanic Six living out their "normal" lives.
The island began time-travelling, half the the gang ended up living as part of the Dharma initiative in 1973, we were introduced to the island's almost mythical protector Jacob as he met the so-called "candidates" at points throughout their lives, then there was the return to the island, the Man In Black...
The show had become so complex that any rational explanation to the question: "What is it all about?" was always going to be a tough one.
The cynics questioned whether writers and head honchos Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse had any idea where it was all heading.
So, the final episode. The finish line. The finale. The end. Was it all worth it?
Life affirming
Honestly, the show ended the only way it could have possibly ended. It was emotionally satisfying while some of the questions were answered and yet others will remain a mystery.
All in all, the show was wrapped up rather nicely with a positive affirming kind of message.
It all began with Flocke (as in Fake Locke, or the Man In Black) having vowed to destroy the island with the help of Desmond, taking him to the island's life source.
Jack, having volunteered to be Jacob's replacement on the island, had the same idea, but rather than using Desmond to destroy the island, he had vowed to kill Flocke.
Desmond did not end up destroying the island. He came very close but by unplugging the island's light source, he succeeded in making Flocke human, thus allowing Kate to kill him with a shot to the back.
Was this a bit of a disappointing end to the Man In Black, the chief antagonist of the last season? Possibly, and a slightly unfair one as well.
The Man In Black (he never even got a name) certainly got a bit of a raw deal when goody-two shoes Jacob threw him into the light source some two thousand years earlier, robbing him both of his body and his humanity.
Was he all bad? He certainly was a bit of a trouble-maker who carried out a few terrible deeds. But in the Across the Sea episode of season six - we saw a man who saw the limitations of his life on island and saw his destiny elsewhere.
By killing him, there, was no chance of his redemption.
Also, surely killing him resulted in a loss of balance on the island. All of Lost's imagery pointed to good and bad co-existing, the black and white stones, the struggle between light and dark.
In the struggle that preceded the fatal shooting, Jack was mortally wounded and resolved to stay and repair the island. Hurley went with him and Jack made him his successor as island protector.
Meanwhile, Sawyer, Kate, Claire, Miles, Richard and Lapidis managed to get the plane working with the help of some duct tape and flew off the island to safety.
Meanwhile, the flashes sideways continued as the survivors were all drawn together at the music concert at the Widmores.
Locke had accepted Jack's offer of surgery and was now capable of walking unaided. Hurley took Sayid to a bar where - after stopping a fight - he was reunited with Shannon.
Sun and Jin were reminded of their time on the island as they saw the ultrasound of their baby and Sawyer and Juliet met again in a touching scene by a snack machine.
Flashes explained
As early as the first season, there were suggestions that no-one survived the plane crash and the island was some sort of purgatory.
Close but no cigar. The island was real and as Jack's dad Christian Shephard ( ... Kate was the one that spotted it. Really how did we all miss that one?) pointed out "everything that happened, happened".
Instead, we learned that rather than being some some kind of alternate-timeline, the flashes sideways were glimpses of a kind of limbo between life and death.
In their deaths - some on the island, some much, much later - they were all pulled together to move on to the afterlife.
The people that meant most to them during their lives would be there with them as they moved on to the next plane of existence.
With various philosophies running throughout the entire series, the final scenes took place in a multi-denominational place of worship.
There were some genuinely moving touches, Ben remained outside the gathering, not quite ready to leave his own personal purgatory and forgive himself for his sins.
Yet Locke did offer him gratefully accepted forgiveness and Hurley, who invited Ben into the gathering said he was a "good number two", with Ben telling Hurley he was a "great number one".
We were left to assume that the two men acted as protectors of the island for some time.
It ended as it had begun with Jack lying in the same bamboo forest in which we first met him in episode one. Back then Jack opened his eyes for the first time on the island, this time around he closed them for the last.
Yes, the finale could be accused of being a bit melodramatic and certainly there were many issues left unaddressed.
Whatever happened to Michael and Walt? What was the significance of the Egyptian statue on the island? What about the temple? Why, at the beginning of this series, was the island underwater?
Discussions will likely rage for years to come but if there is any lesson from the final episode, then it is that sometimes you just have to let go.
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The Syrian conflict has torn the country apart, leaving thousands dead and driving millions to flee their homes. Many seek refuge in neighbouring countries but others pay traffickers to take them to Europe - risking death, capture and deportation.
| If you were fleeing Syria for Europe, what choices would you make for you and your family? Take our journey to understand the real dilemmas the refugees face.
Can't see the interactive? Follow this link: Could you make the right choices?
The routes, options and outcomes in this Syrian Journey feature were based on real stories uncovered by extensive research as part of a BBC Arabic digital project exploring migration from Syria.
Research by Mamdouh Akbiek, Eloise Dicker
Illustrations by Gerry Fletcher. Design and production by Charlotte Thornton, Marcelo Zanni, Dominic Bailey, Adipat Virdi
YOU CAN VIEW THE JOURNEY IN ARABIC, RUSSIAN AND FARSI
Get involved
We would like to know what you would take with you if you were forced to flee your country.
Use the hashtags #whatwouldyoutake and #Syrianjourney to post your choices, with images and/or video. These may be used in a follow-up report.
See what Syrian migrants who made the journey took with them
Survivors' stories
Real stories from people who risked the journey from Syria. A Syrian refugee tells how he nearly drowned in a lorry of melted chocolate as he tried to enter the UK.
Another Syrian, "Mohammed", tells how he walked from Turkey to Italy.
The story of how three Syrian asylum seekers reached Italy in a lorry's reserve fuel tank.
You can read the full story 24 hours in a fuel tank
How a Syrian refugee's long journey to safety was made even longer. The longest detour
The special shoes
Two years before the start of a the Syrian revolution, a young man bought a pair of shoes and decided not to wear them until reunited with his mother in Rotherham. Read the story here
The Facebook smugglers selling the dream of Europe
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Some of the biggest crowds ever seen for a funeral in Iran turned out for that of Qasem Soleimani, the top commander killed in a US air strike last week. In scale, it was second only to the funeral in 1989 of Ayatollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic revolution. | By Kasra NajiBBC Persian
These scenes are perhaps surprising to outsiders, and even to some of the country's most senior leaders.
Only seven weeks ago, Iran witnessed the most violent anti-government demonstrations in decades. Security forces killed anywhere between 330 and 1,500 protesters in more than 100 cities across the country. Thousands more were injured and arrested.
So why have so many people come out to pay homage to Soleimani?
There is no doubt that feelings are running high. Arguably the most important man in the country's armed forces has been assassinated by the US, which for many is the arch-enemy of Iran.
Iran's Foreign Minister Javad Zarif took to Twitter with a message to President Donald Trump: "Have you seen such a sea of humanity in your life?... Do you still think you can break the will of a great nation and its people?"
But it is also clear that the government launched a massive effort to mobilise as many people as possible. The huge turnout sent a strong signal to President Trump that the government enjoys widespread support.
It also sent the message that any foreign aggression would rally Iranians behind their leaders and any war could well be long and costly.
For years, whenever they were short of answers to big problems facing the country, Iranian leaders have relied on mass shows of popular support. Historically, rallies have been to intimidate and silence opposition.
The organisers are now expert in their work. From declaring national holidays to rallying university students or demanding that military personnel and government employees come out with their families, every method of gathering crowds has been used.
Buses, trains and trucks are provided to transport people from villages and towns across Iran to rallies that are relentless advertised by state TV.
People turn up in large numbers because they feel required to do so.
Hardline organisers have powerful supporters, including in the Basij paramilitary force and in the Revolutionary Guards, who can always be relied on to do their duty.
Other factors help explain why so many ordinary Iranians closed ranks behind the country's leaders.
Some see Soleimani as a hero who devoted his life to defending the country. They feel he was uncorrupted and dedicated to his work, unlike many senior soldiers and officials.
He was also a commander of the Revolutionary Guards for much of the eight-year Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, when Iranians - in spite of Western support for Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein - managed to stop Iraqi forces from overrunning their country.
In recent years, Qasem Soleimani also helped check Islamic State (IS) jihadists in Iraq, who had advanced almost to the Iranian border.
For nationalist mourners, Soleimani had projected Iranian power in the Arab world. He was seen as the architect of Iran's presence and reach from Lebanon to Syria, Iraq and Yemen.
There are reports that mourners came out of sheer anger at the assassination of an Iranian general abroad. They felt by killing him, the US was starting a war and that it was time to close ranks in defence of the country.
Former Tehran university professor Sadegh Zibakalam tweeted from the capital that in spite of efforts by the hardliners to own Soleimani, he was a national figure.
Another factor behind the high turnout was loose talk from President Trump. He tweeted that the US had selected 52 targets in Iran for a possible attack if Iran acted to avenge Soleimani's death.
He said these included a number of sites of cultural importance to Iran. Attacking cultural centres is a war crime.
It was immediately clear that this was not the way for the US to win hearts and minds in a country proud of a history that goes back thousands of years.
But many millions did not join the crowds - including those who did not see Soleimani as a force for good.
They saw him as a key cog in an oppressive machine. The reformists in Iran have not forgotten that he was one of 12 commanders who wrote to then-President Mohammad Khatami in 1999 threatening a coup unless he put an end to university unrest.
Many saw him as the architect of Iran's misguided involvement in the regional wars. He directed Hezbollah forces in southern Lebanon in the fighting against Israel in 2006.
He involved Iran in the civil war in Syria, where pro-Iranian forces he organised were responsible for thousands of civilian deaths.
He established and financed dozens of Shia militias in Iraq that operated outside government control, brought instability to that country, and helped create the condition for IS to rise.
In Yemen, he involved Iran in support of Shia Houthis who had overthrown the elected government.
Billions of dollars of Iranian money that could have been spent at home to help the millions living in poverty were instead spent on faraway adventures.
Most importantly, as it is now clear, in life his activities across the region brought Iran close to a war with the US and the world's most powerful military.
Perhaps he has brought Iran even closer to that reality in death.
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Whether you enjoyed curling up with Tetris on a Gameboy, rolling around as Sonic on a Sega, or were just trying to ignore the loud beeping sounds coming from the next room... if you were around in the 1980s and 1990s, you will remember the arrival of home gaming. | By Jennifer ScottBBC News
Computers had made it into our living rooms, and although fans had their favourites - the thrust of Street Fighter, the platforms of Super Mario or the simplicity of Pacman - children and adults alike were hooked.
The market for consoles has continued to grow over the decades as technology companies across the globe try to get their bite out of the gaming pie.
But almost 20 years into the new millennium, passionate players are still looking back in time to find their fix.
"While there's definitely an element of nostalgia, it's important to recognise how well designed many of those classic games are," said technology journalist and retro game collector KG Orphanides.
"The developers had so little space to work with - your average Sega Mega Drive or SNES cartridge had a maximum capacity of just 4MB - and limited graphics and sound capabilities."
The average game now weighs in at 40GB.
Cheap but cheerful
But these limitations did not stop them from making some memorable games.
Gemma Wood, from Basingstoke, has never put her Nintendo GameCube in the loft - despite having it for more than 15 years.
"I love it, in fact I was playing Mario Sunshine and Mario Kart Double Dash yesterday," she said.
"I really could not get on with the controls on the Wii [a more recent Nintendo console] and, with retro consoles, most of the games are cheap because they are second hand.
"Newer consoles and their games are incredibly expensive. I understand that a lot of hard work has gone into the design etc, but how can anyone justify £50 to £60 for a game that you might not even enjoy?"
For others, it is a chance to show their children the computer games they grew up with.
Howard Gardner, from south London, has revived his love of the Amstrad CPC and cannot wait to see the faces of his sons and daughter.
"Five years ago, when clearing out my uncle's house, I found another CPC, restored it to working order and re-acquired some of my old favourite games from eBay - and a laughably outdated 3D modelling package," he said.
"I don't get a whole lot of time to use it, but I plan to show the children the games I used to play and film a reaction video!"
Gaming for all
Whatever your reason for picking up an old joypad, you are not alone, and it is not just an activity to take part in on your own or with the family at home.
There is now a huge community of retro gamers across the country who love to share their passion.
The National Videogame Arcade, which opened in Nottingham in 2015, is a centre of all things gaming.
It welcomes thousands of visitors every year and runs huge events to make the point that gaming is for everyone.
"It's one of the things we talk about a lot at the NVA," said its director Iain Simons.
"You don't know where you are unless you know where you've been. It's important that just because technology has moved forward, it doesn't necessarily mean that new games are better than old ones."
But he warned new gamers not to be complacent.
"One of the things we do notice is that a lot of home computer games from the 80s were much harder than the games that kids are playing these days," said Iain.
"Kids on school trips get very upset to discover that they can't even beat level one of Donkey Kong!"
'Feeling of nostalgia'
The retro aspect has even spread to the way people buy their games.
Kevin Cornwall manages retro games shop Playnation Games in Croydon and says the physical store adds to the feel.
"It is what people want," he said. "It is that feeling of nostalgia, being able to look through the games, see and feel the boxes.
"Modern gaming has had its pitfalls so now people are looking to the past to relive some real gaming memories."
If you want to try before you buy, there has also been a resurgence in arcades or gaming cafes. These were something more common in the US or Japan when the games took off, but now the UK is getting in on the action.
Konbo Arcade Cafe in Edinburgh offers classic arcade machines and believes a good game never goes out of style.
Owner Michael Cox said: "Konbo is influenced by the Japanese arcade scene and, over there, old games weren't removed and brought back in response to a trend - they never went away.
"They were simply accepted as good games - no level of gimmickry or nostalgia involved, no more than we would treat a 20-year-old film or piece of music as a novelty.
"A good game doesn't stop being a good game, and there's no reason a new generation of people can't rediscover and enjoy it all over again."
A modern twist
One of the household names of the gaming revolution, Nintendo, has always been a big draw - so much so, it has revived some of its older consoles in brand new casings, offering a collection of games in one handy machine.
Last year's NES Classic was the must-have Christmas gift, but left fans disappointed when demand outstripped supply and the device was discontinued in April.
Now, the company is bringing its SNES back in the same format and promising not to make the same error.
Atari has also announced it will be bringing out a new console - 40 years after its original Video Computer System.
CEO Fred Chesnais told GamesBeat: "We're back in the hardware business."
"Those games are very approachable," added KG. "You can sit down and play for 10 or 20 minutes and feel that you've had a genuinely rewarding experience."
Retro gaming fans have welcomed the new devices - though it will not stop them collecting the original machines and cartridges.
Take Andy Aldred, who has 19 consoles, alongside his PC, eight hand-held devices and over 1,000 games in a dedicated room.
"They are a really decent way of getting a nice collection of classic games for a reasonable price," he said. "Buying the original hardware and all those games would cost a small fortune."
He still takes advantage of the newer technology on offer, but there is something special about the older genre.
"For a lot of people there is an element of nostalgia and being able to own all the games they wanted to play growing up," he said.
You may reminisce about these games in a fun way - the fighting with your siblings over the next turn or the shouts of "hadouken" as you battled.
You may recall a general feeling of confusion from the whole hubbub and noisy soundtrack.
Or you may be dedicated to your modern Xbox, PlayStations and Switches.
But in 2017, there is no denying the old school technology is well and truly back, and far from Game Over.
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The US has launched a major missile strike against an airfield in Syria from where it believes a suspected chemical weapons attack was launched earlier this week.
President Trump gave a televised statement explaining why he had ordered the US Navy into action: | "My fellow Americans,
On Tuesday, Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad launched a horrible chemical weapons attack on innocent civilians.
Using a deadly nerve agent, Assad choked out the lives of helpless men, women and children.
It was a slow and brutal death for so many. Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack.
No child of God should ever suffer such horror.
Tonight I ordered a targeted military strike on the airfield in Syria from where the chemical attack was launched.
It is in this vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons.
There can be no dispute that Syria used banned chemical weapons, violated its obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention and ignored the urging of the UN Security Council.
Years of previous attempts at changing Assad's behaviour have all failed and failed very dramatically.
As a result, the refugee crisis continues to deepen and the region continues to destabilise, threatening the United States and its allies.
Tonight I call on all civilised nations to join us in seeking to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria, and also to end terrorism of all kinds and all types.
We ask for God's wisdom as we face the challenge of our very troubled world.
We pray for the lives of the wounded and for the souls of those who have passed.
And we hope that as long as America stands for justice, then peace and harmony will, in the end, prevail.
Goodnight. And God bless America and the entire world.
Thank you."
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Sarah Palin's endorsement of Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump on Tuesday night was billed as a surprise, but in hindsight it is surprising only that it took so long for this natural political partnership to be forged. | Anthony ZurcherNorth America reporter@awzurcheron Twitter
Ms Palin is the only Republican in recent history to demonstrate the kind of star power that has elevated Mr Trump to the top in the race for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. Mr Trump regularly draws crowds numbering in the thousands - just as Ms Palin did after Senator John McCain chose her to be his vice-presidential running mate in 2008.
Both Mr Trump and Ms Palin also have complementary political outlooks and appeal to the same segment of the Republican primary electorate - non-college educated, largely working class whites who are disillusioned with professional politicians and Washington politics in general. These voters view the scorn of the establishment elite - which has been heaped, at times, on both Ms Palin and Mr Trump - as a badge of honour rather than a weakness.
For some Republican candidates, an endorsement from Ms Palin could alienate their support among party leaders who question Ms Palin's intellect and interest in governing. In Mr Trump's case, however, these Republican elders and Washington pundits have long since turned against his campaign.
Even the speaking styles of Mr Trump and Ms Palin - unvarnished and informal, relying on rhetoric and not policy details - are similar.
Last January Ms Palin - who was then reportedly mulling her own bid for the 2016 Republican nomination - delivered a much-derided speech during a Republican forum in Iowa that drew many other presidential aspirants.
It's worth another listen. Her presentation was dismissed as unfocused and at times incoherent, more akin to a stream of consciousness rather than the traditional set-pieces delivered by others on the stage.
In hindsight, however, it was exactly the kind of monologue that Donald Trump has given day after day since he launched his campaign - and his supporters love him for it.
The two even have drawn from the same pool of political staff. Michael Glassner, the Trump campaign's national political director, served as chief of staff for Ms Palin's political action committee.
But how valuable is Ms Palin's support for Trump? While the former Alaska governor's reputation has been diminished since the heady days of 2008 - thanks to her absence from public office and involvement in series of questionable reality television shows - she is still well-liked by conservative Republicans and nearly universally known.
Her backing could help insulate Mr Trump against charges that he's not a true believer in the cause due to his support for liberal political issues and candidates in the past. At the very least, she could had have even more crowd-drawing power to a Trump campaign that already fill entire sports arenas.
To best understand the potentially ground-shifting implications of the Trump-Palin entente, however, observe how the campaign of Ted Cruz, the candidate closest to Mr Trump in the polls, has reacted.
"Sarah Palin has been a champion for the conservative cause, and if she was going to endorse Donald Trump, sadly, she would be endorsing someone who's held progressive views all their life on the sanctity of life, on marriage, on partial-birth abortion," Cruz campaign spokesman Rick Tyler told a television interviewer on Tuesday when rumours of a Palin endorsement first surfaced. "Donald Trump claims he's changed all those views. But I think if it was Sarah Palin - let me just say, I'd be deeply disappointed."
Leon Wolf, a blogger on the conservative RedState blog was even more dismayed.
"There is literally no excuse for Sarah Palin not to endorse Ted Cruz, if she believes even half the things she's been saying over the years about mavericks and people who have taken on entrenched Republican interests," he writes. "Donald Trump has done none of this."
He ascribes the endorsement to Ms Palin's desire to profit from Mr Trump's recent popularity.
Dismissing Ms Palin's support as irrelevant or misguided could prove a tricky line of attack for Mr Cruz and his supporters, however.
Texas Senator Ted Cruz surged to national prominence due in large part to the grassroots conservative Tea Party movement that Ms Palin helped inspire. In his book, he credits her endorsement as contributing to his upset Senate win in 2012 over a better-known, better-financed establishment Republican candidate.
"In a Republican primary, everyone claims to be conservative and voters are pretty cynical," Mr Cruz told Mike Allen of Politico in August 2012. "I think conservatives trust Sarah Palin that if she says this guy is a conservative, that he is a real deal."
Ted Cruz believed that about Ms Palin in 2012. Will Republican voters who might otherwise support Mr Cruz - in Iowa and elsewhere - follow her into Trump's ranks today?
Republican candidates in, and out, of the 2016 presidential race
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Monday was the coldest August night since records began in Jersey.
| The temperature fell to 7.7C (45.86F) at Jersey Airport, John Searson from the Jersey Meteorological Department said
"Last night clear skies and next to no wind allowed the temperatures to drop to 7.7C at the airport, which is the coldest August temperature recorded... since the records began in 1951."
He also said it was a sign that autumn was on its way.
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An 18-year-old man has been arrested over incidents in Lanarkshire at the weekend which saw people hospitalised after taking a drug called "Rockstar". | Seven people suffered adverse reactions to taking the pills but were later released from hospital.
Police described the red or yellow-coloured tablets, with a star impression on them, as a potentially deadly substance.
The man arrested is expected to appear at Airdrie Sheriff Court on Tuesday.
The police appeal at the weekend said the tablets had been sold as ecstasy.
They contained a cocktail of substances which were "unreliable, unpredictable and potentially very dangerous".
Those affected after taking the pills are understood to have suffered symptoms such as increased heart rate, elevated core temperature and seizures.
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A wooden building in the Highlands with its own "house sheep" has been entered into Channel 4's Shed of the Year competition. | The property at Inshriach House, an Edwardian country house on an estate near Aviemore, will feature on the programme next month.
The winner is decided by a public vote.
Inshriach House's owner Walter Micklethwait hopes Dash, a lamb who shares a bed with a dog called Monty, will win them some extra support.
Mr Micklethwait, who built the shed with help from his girlfriend Lizzy Westman, has dubbed the lamb a "house sheep".
He said: "Dash was rejected by her mother so has been living in our house.
"She is 12 days old and thinks she is a dog."
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Worried about a lump? Got a nasty cough that won't budge? Many people Google queries about such symptoms daily - but now they can get NHS advice instantly by asking Amazon's Alexa. | The voice-activated assistant is now automatically searching NHS web pages to find answers to medical questions.
And the government hopes it will reduce the demand on human doctors.
But the move has split opinion among artificial intelligence (AI) experts and data ethicists.
"The sensitive data holdings of a national healthcare provider like the NHS are a form of 'critical social infrastructure'," said Berlin-based tech expert Mathana Stender.
"Yet they've been handed to a foreign company that's both a defence contractor and targeted advertiser,"
NHS GP David Wrigley asked, among other things, whether the questions asked via Alexa would be encrypted and who would store any data relating to patient queries.
Amazon has said all data would be kept confidential.
The NHS has increasingly partnered with private companies to offer access to its services.
Notably, Babylon Health, Push Doctor and Now GP all allow video appointments with GPs to be made remotely.
Babylon Health, for example, says only patients and staff involved in service provision have access to patient medical records.
It adds that all data is encrypted and held in English data centres.
Amazon said multiple layers of authentication would protect the data from UK customers and that all information would be encrypted.
Some commentators felt that the service did not present obvious risks to users' privacy.
Areeq Chowdhury, at the Future Advocacy think tank, pointed out that Alexa already responded to health queries from users.
"Now the advice (which will be better and more accurate) will come from the NHS website," he tweeted.
New Scientist's deputy news editor Jacob Aron said the "fuss" over the partnership was "ridiculous".
"It's just a Google search you talk to, and at least people will get NHS [information]."
There was another issue at stake, however. Some pointed out that Amazon is known to have major ambitions in the healthcare industry.
During 2018 the firm took a number of steps in this direction - including pairing up with Omron Healthcare to allow a blood pressure monitor to be controlled via Alexa.
It also announced software that could automatically analyse electronic health records for information that could be useful to doctors.
The tool will use AI to pick out important details from medical documents - including "hospital admission notes and a patient's medical history".
Some have asked whether the NHS-Alexa partnership will allow Amazon to gather yet more data on how patients raise medical concerns.
"Is Amazon training its algorithm... on NHS patients' queries?" asked data privacy campaigner Phil Booth.
Amazon said that it would not sell products or make product recommendations based on the data collected as part of the NHS partnership.
The firm also confirmed that it would not build a health profile of users who asked Alexa health-related questions.
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Almost £3m is recovered in unpaid taxes in Guernsey, making it the largest amount collected in a single year, the States says.
| The money, which included unpaid income tax and the resulting penalties, was recovered after 162 enquiries were followed up by officials in 2012.
Rob Gray, director of income tax, said it would be more difficult for the same people to evade tax again.
He said that there had been six successful prosecutions since 2009.
Residents are being urged to contact the States if they suspect other islanders of underpaying.
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A painting by Mexican artist Diego Rivera has been sold by Christie's in New York for a record $9.76m (£7.17m), the highest price paid for a Latin American artwork at auction. | The record had previously been set by a work by Frida Kahlo, with whom Rivera had a decades-long tumultuous relationship.
Her Two Nudes in the Forest sold for $8m in 2016.
The Rivals was bought by an unnamed collector bidding over the phone.
It is part of the record-breaking sale of late US billionaire David Rockefeller's private art collection, which has become the highest-grossing sale of a single-owner art collection at auction.
The colourful painting depicts two men in conical hats attending a traditional Mexican celebration. It was commissioned by Abby Rockefeller, David Rockefeller's mother, for her own private collection.
In 1941, she gifted the painting to David and his wife Peggy, who hung it prominently in their living room at their home in Seal Harbor, Maine.
Another work by Rivera, Dance in Tehuantepec holds the record for the Latin American painting to fetch the highest sum ever, not just at auction.
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Jersey's links to French power lines have been reconnected.
| The island experienced a major power failure on Sunday night after problems with submarine cables to France. Local back-up generators had to be used.
Jersey Electricity said the island's power was now coming from both the local generators and France.
Chris Ambler, from the firm, said on Monday engineers in Jersey and France had been working to find the cause of the power cut.
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A consultation over reorganising two Pembrokeshire schools may be scrapped and restarted for a third time.
| Councillor Huw George confirmed an extraordinary meeting has been called for 26 November.
The BBC understands the consultation on Tasker Milward and Sir Thomas Picton schools in Haverfordwest may be stopped due to fears of a legal challenge.
The council's director for children and schools will offer to restart the consultation for both separately.
The charity that owns the Tasker Milward site had been unhappy with plans to merge the schools.
There were plans to open a new Welsh-medium comprehensive on the Sir Thomas Picton site.
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A 24-year-old man has appeared in court charged with the murder of a man at a flat in north Belfast. | Barry Christopher Cavan was charged with murdering David Corr, 24, on Thursday.
The body of Mr Corr, who was from the New Lodge area of Belfast, was discovered at the flat in Victoria Parade. It is believed he had suffered stab wounds.
The accused was remanded in custody.
Detective Sergeant McDowell told Belfast Magistrates Court he believed he could connect Mr Cavan, from Cuchullain House, also in the New Lodge area, to the charge.
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It's Halloween - and tonight's the night ghosts come out to play. Wherever you are in England there could be a local wraith, ghoul or phantom waiting in the shadows. And they are not all generic spooks or mysterious grey ladies. Here are a few of the ghosts to whom we can give a name - and to some, even a face. | By Bethan BellBBC News
So you know exactly who to blame when that chilly miasma descends.
William Terriss
William Terriss was a dashing 19th Century actor, who was murdered at the stage door of the Adelphi theatre in London. The matinee idol had drawn thousands to his performances in popular melodrama.
At the time of his death he was portraying Captain Thorne in "Secret Service". He spent the afternoon of Thursday 16th December 1897 playing whist at his West End club before taking a taxi to the theatre at about 19:00. As he entered the building, a man rushed across the street and stabbed him.
The killer was Richard Prince, a fellow actor who had appeared in several plays alongside him. Prince was mentally unstable and believed Terriss had prevented him from getting roles. Convicted of murder, Prince was sent to Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum.
Terriss, meanwhile, was not at rest. He is said to haunt the theatre and the site of a bakery he used to visit. The bakery was demolished when Covent Garden underground station was built, and according to 1950s ticket inspector Jack Hayden, Terriss, wearing a top hat, frock coat and grey suit, would rattle the door of the office.
He's also been spotted in the tunnels and the staff room. When approached, he disappears into thin air.
Richard Prince, too, lingers on - not as a ghost (as far as we know) but as a role in a play called The Murder Club, one of the Lullabies of Broadmoor.
Dame Armine
The widowed Armine Le Strange Styleman inherited Hunstanton Hall in Norfolk after her brother Henry died childless. The wealthy family owned many treasures - but above all, Armine loved a carpet she had been given by the Shah of Persia.
Her obsession for the floor-covering was such that on her deathbed she issued a threat - if the carpet was removed from the ancestral home, she would come back and haunt the hall. Her son agreed and when she died, he put it in a trunk and stored it safely.
Nearly a century later, a new mistress - Emmeline - arrived at the family pile and opened the trunk. Seeing a tatty old carpet, she chopped it into pieces to distribute to the local poor.
Returning home after handing out the bounty to the grateful needy, Emmeline saw a ferocious grey face at the window and later recognised Armine - both from a family portrait and because the ghoul looked strikingly similar to her new husband, Armine's descendant Hamon Le Strange.
The couple reported that candles would blow out and ghostly footsteps plodded the corridors until Hamon remembered the family legend about the carpet.
Despite the couple eventually retrieving the pieces of rug and stitching them together again, Armine's angry soul did not rest. Generation after generation claimed to have seen the apparition or felt its effects.
Armine is said to still haunt the hall, which has now been converted into flats. All for a carpet.
Isambard Kingdom Brunel
In life, Isambard Kingdom Brunel kept himself busy with the design and construction of a network of tunnels, bridges and viaducts for the Great Western Railway.
According to some, he has kept himself equally busy in death.
Since dying of a stroke in 1859, he is alleged to have stalked around the now permanently-closed British Empire and Commonwealth Museum in Bristol, where he once had an office.
Staff reported the smell of tobacco smoke and "steady footsteps" as the top-hat-wearing engineer paced the halls.
He has also been reported lurking at the site of the Clifton Suspension Bridge, which he designed but never saw completed.
Count Louis Zborowski
Count Louis Zborowski, the wealthy son of a Polish Count and an American mother, was an English racing driver and car engineer who built a number of racing motors called Chitty Bang Bang. These were the inspiration for a certain Ian Fleming and his tale of a magical car.
Aged just 16, he inherited a vast fortune, including Higham Park House - a country pile near Canterbury in Kent - and dedicated his life to the pursuit of speed.
Wearing a variety of brightly-coloured golfing caps, the dashing count raced for Aston Martin at Brooklands, in Surrey, as well as at the French and Italian grand prix and at the Indianapolis 500.
He joined the Mercedes team in 1924 but died aged 29 when his car hit a tree during the Italian Grand Prix. His ghost is now said to haunt his ancestral home.
Guests at Higham Park House have reported hearing the phantom sounds of a car tearing up the drive, stopping to let someone out, and roaring off again to race along the A2.
When the engine stops, the doors of one of the house's rooms apparently bursts open and the count has also been spotted striding across his land, sporting one of his distinctive golfing caps.
Jean Baptiste du Barre
The Vicomte du Barre visited Bath in the summer of 1778 with his wife and sister, and a friend called Captain Rice. They took a lease at a fashionable address and arranged lavish card parties in the house, hoping to profit from the gambling mania that gripped the city at that time.
One night the count and his friend quarrelled over the sharing of £600 they had won. Capt Rice threw down his glove. The challenge was accepted.
They headed off to Claverton Down. Du Barre fired his pistol first, and wounded his friend in the thigh. Capt Rice's aim, though, was more deadly. Du Barre was hit in the chest.
He was taken to the nearby George Inn in Bathampton where he died.
Rice was tried for murder and acquitted, after which he went to Spain.
Du Barre was buried in Bathampton churchyard, but several landlords have said they saw his spirit propping up the bar at the George.
He's said to be "of friendly countenance". Just don't play cards with him.
Brainy Dobbs
Aircraftman "Brainy" Dobbs was a fan of "balloon hopping" - a largely-forgotten sport of the 1920s which involved the participant being harnessed to a gas balloon before bouncing across the landscape. Dobbs, a parachutist in the RAF, was a trailblazer for the pastime.
This came to an abrupt halt in 1927, when he was at Stag Lane aerodrome in Hendon, north London. Dobbs was making gigantic leaps across the field, rising to over 100 ft and then settling back to earth before propelling himself once more into the air. Unfortunately he sailed into electric power cables and died.
Now the airman, who got his nickname because of his many eccentric flying experiments, is said to haunt his former barracks at RAF Henlow in Bedfordshire. On cold and windy nights he can be heard walking through the hangars.
Some witnesses have said they have been shoved in the back by a rush of chilly air, and at least one has reported poltergeist-style activity when his room - formerly Dobbs' - was trashed.
Spooky.
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Many millions of tonnes of televisions, phones and other electronic equipment are discarded each year, despite them being a rich source of metals. But now e-waste mining has the potential to become big business. | By Emma WoollacottTechnology of Business reporter
Professor Veena Sahajwalla's mine in Australia produces gold, silver and copper - and there isn't a pick-axe in sight.
Her "urban mine" at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) is extracting these materials not from rock, but from electronic gadgets.
The Sydney-based expert in materials science reckons her operation will become efficient enough to be making a profit within a couple of years.
"Economic modelling shows the cost of around $500,000 Australian dollars (£280,000) for a micro-factory pays off in two to three years, and can generate revenue and create jobs," she says.
"That means there are environmental, social and economic benefits."
In fact, research indicates that such facilities can actually be far more profitable than traditional mining.
According to a study published recently in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, a typical cathode-ray tube TV contains about 450g of copper and 227g of aluminium, as well as around 5.6g of gold.
While a gold mine can generate five or six grammes of the metal per tonne of raw material, that figure rises to as much as 350g per tonne when the source is discarded electronics.
The figures emerged in a joint study from Beijing's Tsinghua University and Macquarie University, in Sydney, where academics examined data from eight recycling companies in China to work out the cost for extracting these metals from electronic waste.
Expenses included the costs of waste collection, labour, energy, material and transportation, as well as capital costs for the recyclers' equipment and buildings.
And when these costs - and the effects of Chinese government subsidies for recycling - were taken into account, the team found that mining from ore was 13 times more expensive than e-waste mining.
"The mining of e-waste, and production of pure metal ingots from it of copper or gold, promises to be a very profitable business," said Macquarie's Prof John Mathews.
"The earliest practitioners are likely to be metals specialists, particularly small entrepreneurial firms who are aware of the scale of the e-waste problem."
The amount of e-waste being generated certainly suggests that the business opportunities for recycling will increase. The International Telecommunications Union, a UN agency, estimates that about 45 millions tonnes of e-waste was generated in 2016, and is expected to top 50 million tonnes by 2021.
In 2016 alone, 435,000 tonnes of phones were discarded, despite containing as much as €9.4bn (£8.3bn) worth of raw materials.
With China now cracking down on imports of e-waste for recycling, there's increasing pressure on the EU, the US, Australia and Japan to find solutions of their own.
And an EU-funded project called ProSUM - Prospecting Secondary Raw Materials in the Urban Mine and Mining Wastes - is designed to help by allowing commercial companies to track the materials available for mining from scrap vehicles, dead batteries and waste electronic and electrical equipment.
"We are now at the experimenting phase in Europe," says Dr Kees Baldé, of the United Nations University. "There are many new entrepreneurs starting new businesses based on new 'urban mining' business models - for instance, bringing supply and demand for recyclables closer to each other by novel technologies and virtual market places.
"They use it for planning purposes, for instance to know the fractions that they currently do not receive in their recycling plants, but also for long term strategy of their business."
While traditional mining is labour-intensive, e-waste mining can be highly automated.
At Prof Sahajwalla's micro-factory, for example, robots are used to identify and separate useful parts.
She says e-waste passes through a sort of production line. "The discarded-waste devices are first placed into a module to break them down. The next module involves a special robot to extract useful parts.
"Another module uses a small furnace to separate the metallic parts into valuable materials, while another one reforms the plastic into a high-grade filament suitable for 3D printing," she says.
Apple, meanwhile, is trying to counter criticisms that its phones are difficult to recycle with the recent demonstration of a robot - called Daisy - that can disassemble up to 200 iPhones an hour.
Daisy can handle nine different models of the phone, separating parts and removing useful components.
Prof Mathews says more manufacturers should be making an effort to ensure their products can be mined at the end of their useful life.
"One of the best policy supports for e-waste will be payment of a deposit to consumers who return their e-products like cell phones to central collection points," he says. "There could also be incentives paid to manufacturers to make their products more easily disassembled."
More Technology of Business
Currently most attention is focused on mining TV sets, as there's a massive backlog of these products, yet in the future the most common source for e-waste will be cell phones. "That is where the focus should be," says Prof Mathews.
In a study released last year, Greenpeace calculated that e-waste from smartphone production reached 3.3 million tonnes in 2014.
Phones typically contain as many as 60 elements, including rare metals such as iridium, which is used in touch screen technology.
Mined mainly in China, iridium has been in short supply, with the price rising steadily for months. However, some e-waste mining projects, such as the RecEOL initiative recently announced in Ireland, can recover iridium from scrap products, along with other rare metals such as tantalum.
All these opportunities are likely to make e-waste mining even more profitable in future.
But the boom may be limited.
Adam Read, a director at one of Britain's biggest waste and recycling companies, Suez UK, points out the electronics firms are finding ways to use less valuable materials in their products.
The real value for e-miners is in older products, so "it might be more expensive to treat the next generation of electrical items, since they will have less inherent value to recover," says Mr Read.
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"I decided long ago I would do military service," says Saara Piitulainen, a 22-year-old voluntary servicewoman. "My father was a peacekeeper, and that is what I want to do myself." | By Maija UnkuriSakyla, Finland
She has come to the right place. The Huovinrinne garrison in Sakyla in western Finland is where Finnish peacekeeping forces train before they leave for crisis areas around the world. Now she is training to be a non-commissioned officer.
Finnish women have been doing voluntary military service since before Saara Piitulainen was born and this year a record 1,500 applied. In a few days' time she will be promoted to corporal.
But for the first time since the military was opened up to women in 1995, the idea has been floated of temporarily excluding them as a way of cutting costs.
"We have to find savings somewhere," said Defence Minister Jussi Niinisto. A couple of days later, after a heated debate, he rejected the idea and said he didn't even back it himself.
Should women serve and if so how?
But his short-lived proposal has shone a light on the separate roles of men and women, in a country where men have to serve up to a year of military or civilian (community) service from the age of 18 while women can choose.
Finns are now asking if voluntary service is good for women and whether or not it is the right model for their armed forces.
"One of the best things about women in the forces is their strong motivation," says Alexiana Gaudiat, 21. "I think also that female leaders in the army are very capable".
Alexiana Gaudiat is in the same group as Saara Piitulainen and both are opposed to the defence minister's recent idea of excluding women from the army.
"I had leadership training in mind when I came to the army," says Alexiana Gaudiat.
Both women are restaurant chefs in their civilian lives. Working under pressure and discipline are required in both fields.
"There is a tough hierarchy in the restaurant world, so I knew how it might be in the army," says Saara Piitulainen.
Five facts about women in the Finnish military
Has #MeToo changed Finland?
As elsewhere, in Finland the #MeToo campaign has exposed an undercurrent of sexual harassment in society.
More than half of women under 35 have experienced some form of sexual harassment, a survey by the health ministry suggests.
In Finland's military that proportion is a quarter, although half of all women have suffered discrimination, according to research from the Finnish Conscripts' Union.
However, both those polls were conducted before the campaign against harassment went global, and in Finland it has had a visible effect.
"I was a bit nervous before joining the army, because I had read a lot online about attitudes towards women in the forces," says Alexiana Gaudiat. "My thoughts radically changed when I came here. I have not experienced any discrimination at all."
"Sometimes we march long distances with very heavy packs on the back. [Men] always help. Of course, you shouldn't just give up and lie down in tears in a heap of snow."
Different ideas for women in the military
Saara Piitulainen believes that being a volunteer accentuates the divide between the sexes, and after the Conscripts' Union revealed the rates of discrimination in the forces it called for conscription to be extended to women as well as men.
Not only would the number of women be increased, the union argued, but it would gradually force a change in how Finnish society sees its armed forces.
Another proposal entirely has come from a think tank led by Elisabeth Rehn, a former defence minister.
The idea would be for a universal community service for both men and women.
A set number of conscripts would join the armed forces, another group would do community service in different places in society, while a third group would not be involved at all. The first two groups would pay no tax for some years after service, while the third group would pay tax throughout.
'Training for war'
Whatever the future holds for women in Finland's military, it is clear that the defence minister has kick-started a national debate in a country that has a partnership with Nato, but like its neighbour Sweden is not a member.
Mr Niinisto believes there should be no voluntary option for military recruits, because he fears it jeopardises the number of conscripts Finland needs.
"We have to have a universal military service, so that we are able to train for war a military of 280,000 people," he told Finnish public TV.
He is keen for Finland's political parties to come up with policies on the future of the armed forces and their budget ahead of elections next year.
The two student NCOs from the Huovinrinne garrison do not believe military service is right for every woman.
"You need a certain toughness to cope sometimes, like when you start a 20km march on skis when you really don't feel like doing it," says Alexiana Gaudiat. She would rather the system did not change at all.
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The winner of a £40,000 arts prize will be revealed at a ceremony in Cardiff later. | Six contemporary artists are on the Artes Mundi shortlist, including Welsh artist Bedwyr Williams.
The winner will be announced at the National Museum of Wales on Thursday evening.
This is the seventh time the prize has been awarded - in 2015, winner Theaster Gates shared his £40,000 prize with the nine other shortlisted artists.
Entrants this year represent countries including Lebanon, Angola and the USA.
The final six were chosen from a field of more than 700 nominations from 90 countries.
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The couple accused of holding three women as slaves for more than 30 years were activists in a Maoist group in London. It was a period when the UK had a plethora of small left-wing collectives and communes. | By Lucy TownsendBBC News Magazine
Aravindan Balakrishnan, known as Comrade Bala, and his wife Chanda ran a bookshop and commune from a large building in Brixton.
Balakrishnan had been a member of the Communist Party of England (Marxist-Leninist) in the early 1970s but split and formed his own collective in 1974 - the Workers' Institute of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought. It comprised about 25 people.
The group was not unusual. There were about 20 Maoist groups active in the UK in the 1970s, says Michel Hockx, director of the SOAS China Institute at SOAS, University of London. All followed the ideology of Chinese communist leader, Mao Zedong, who put industry under state ownership, collectivised farming and ruthlessly suppressed opposition.
"All [the UK groups] considered themselves Maoists, but they fought against each other about who was in possession of the right ideology," he says.
"Some were fairly militant, they would actively promote overthrowing the capitalist systems and class systems. Others practised communal living, equality as a group."
In some of the groups work would be collectively organised, people took meals together, shared possessions and would take part in political planning together.
"Whatever they produced would be divided among each other according to how much work they did, or more ideologically, by how much they needed it," adds Hockx.
It wasn't just Maoists, there was a great deal of other radical activism at the time.
"There was general ferment in society. In terms of radical politics people were very engaged by the war in Vietnam, significant numbers of young people were protesting about that," says Prof Dennis Tourish, author of The Dark Side of Transformational Leadership.
"It was also the three-day week, the collapse of Franco in Spain, the 1968 Paris riots, there had been the assassination of Kennedy and Martin Luther King. There was a mood of radicalisation. Many people were drawn to far left causes at one time or another."
Robert Griffiths, general secretary of the Communist Party of Britain, has described Balakrishnan's Maoist sect as the "breakaway of a breakaway of a breakaway".
The term used was "splittist". Groups would part company and suspend members who did not toe the party line or presented a different view of the same ideology. Fringe groups would then form, often creating angry rivalries with their former comrades.
"Each spilt had its own pope, its divine leader, but they were all trying to colonise the same belief systems," adds Tourish.
Left-wing groups were active across the UK, but in Brixton in south London, there was a ready supply of short-term empty houses in neighbourhoods that Lambeth Council was gradually clearing for its housing programmes. It provided ample choice for people looking to set up squats and communes.
"There were also plenty of empty or under-used small shop premises, like that at Acre Lane, which has been linked with the Mao Zedong Memorial Trust," says Alan Piper, of the Brixton Society.
"Some of these groups took a closer interest in local affairs, and went on to organise squats or housing co-ops or print workshops, or even to contest local council elections.
"Others were more oriented to national or international causes, so had a lower profile in the immediate area," he adds.
Not all of the fringe groups were based around communes.
The Workers' Revolutionary Party encouraged their members to share accommodation, according to Tourish, but it was not mandatory.
"They had a number of other techniques to draw in members and reinforce their commitment," he says.
"It was only a small party - at its peak it had around 1,000 people - but for example they put huge effort into producing a daily newspaper which they would then spend their days trying to sell, and being ignored and ridiculed for it.
"That effort raised their commitment, and gave the members a very powerful group identity."
Nick Cohen, author of What's Left?, has written that hard work reinforced loyalty.
"They have committed all that time, all that hope and enthusiasm, how can they admit it has all been for nothing?"
There were some people at the time that worried that some of the groups that advocated communal living had echoes of cults.
"People were starting to worry about young people who had joined a group or who had quite extreme beliefs or sought out alternative ways of living," says Dr Suzanne Newcombe of the charity Inform.
"It wasn't just political - there were religious cults, utopian groups.
"There was also a deep mistrust in our society's traditional authority figures, and in response some blindly trusted alternative authority figures."
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A significant consequence of the horrific rape and death of a 23-year-old student in Delhi has been the decision to set up six "fast track" courts in the capital to deal specifically with cases relating to sexual assaults of women. | Soutik BiswasDelhi correspondent
Fast track courts are not new in India - have they worked?
Going by numbers, yes. Ever since they were set up by the federal government in 2001 to help tackle the case backlog, more than 1,000 fast track courts have disposed of more than three million cases.
Many lawyers believe this is a considerable achievement given the fact that more than 30 million cases are pending in high and district courts in India.
To add to litigants' woes, there's also a shortage of judges as vacancies are not filled: high courts have 32% fewer judges than they should and district courts have a 21% shortfall. No wonder the ratio of judges is as low as 14 per one million people, compared with over 100 judges per million citizens in the US. Some years ago, a Delhi High Court judge reckoned it would take more than 450 years to clear the backlog given then judge numbers.
All this prodded the government to launch a scheme under which more than 1,700 fast track courts would tackle long-pending cases at a cost of $90m (£56.18m). An average of five such courts were to be established in each district of the country. The judges were to be a mix of retired high court judges and promoted judicial officers.
But funding has been an issue. The central government said it could no longer fund the new courts after March 2011, leaving future funding decisions to individual states. The result - some states have done away with the courts after finding them too expensive to run.
Former Supreme Court chief justice KG Balakrishnan has said the fast track courts were quite successful in reducing the backlog of cases. "If you go by numbers, the record of these courts has been good. But we still don't have any evidence on the quality of the judgements these courts have delivered," says Dr V Nagaraj who teaches law at the Bangalore-based National Law School of India University.
Hasty trials raise fears of possible miscarriages of justice. India's Law Commission sums up the paradox: "Justice delayed is justice denied and at the same time justice hurried is justice buried."
Leading lawyer and rights activist Colin Gonsalves says fast-track courts have not turned out to be a "very satisfactory system of delivering justice".
He told Voice of America recently that people are "generally very upset by the declining standards of these courts and have defined it as 'fast-track injustice.'"
"These courts are given unrealistic targets of cases to finish. They have been told they ought not get involved in too much technicality, and that broadly if they get a feeling that a person is guilty, then declare him guilty and if he is innocent, then declare him innocent."
"But that's not how the criminal justice system works. It requires care and attention. Decisions are not made on the basis of hunches and guess work, which is what the fast-track courts turned out to be. Judges [were] cutting down on evidence, not allowing full cross-examinations, proceeding in the absence of lawyers in many cases."
Dr Nagaraj echoes a similar sentiment, saying there's "some scepticism" about how these courts work. He is mainly concerned with the fact that many of the judges are retirees who are on contracts "and not really accountable to the high court for any miscarriage of justice".
Eventually, experts say, India may have to bite the bullet if it wants to speed up justice - to achieve the government's target of 50 judges for every million people more judges will need to be appointed in regular courts.
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When Phil Nisbet died in May 2009, the empty pill packets made it seem like suicide. But his sister, Lee-Anne Cartier, soon began to suspect her brother's wife, and eventually presented the police with evidence they could not ignore. | By Lucy WallisBBC World Service
"His biggest fault was that he trusted people too much," says Lee-Anne Cartier. "He didn't see that there were bad people out there or that people would do the wrong thing."
Her brother Phil was the oldest of the four siblings, while Lee-Anne was the youngest - there were two other boys, Andrew and Roger, between them.
She remembers riding on the back of Phil's motorbike, as he took her to Girl's Brigade, when she was only eight years old.
He was the "goody-good" of the family, she says. "He didn't go to a pub until he was 21."
That was 40 years ago, in New Zealand. Later most of the family went to live in Australia. But Phil stayed behind. He was 47 and had been working as a lorry driver in May 2009, when Lee-Anne received a devastating phone call from her father.
He told her Phil was dead. He'd been found in his lorry, and police believed he had killed himself.
"I broke the news to Andrew, and that was the worst," says Lee-Anne. "When I finally got hold of him and told him to make sure his son was in another room, he just shrieked."
She couldn't understand what would have driven him to this.
"It was just so strange. I hadn't had anything to do with Phil for a couple of years, so I didn't really know what was going on in his life, and I was just thinking, 'What the heck's happened?'"
The autopsy showed Phil's body contained high levels of an antihistamine drug he was known to be allergic to, and at that point, Lee-Anne felt she had to accept the theory that it was suicide.
"We had nothing else to go on," she says. "You're in such shock. You're just absorbing what everyone's saying."
Find out more
Lee-Anne helped to arrange the funeral and travelled to New Zealand to say goodbye to Phil before he was cremated, but Phil's wife, Helen, refused to leave her alone with him.
The relationship between the two women had broken down in 2006, while Lee-Anne's son, Lance, had been staying with Phil and Helen in New Zealand - the teenager had upset Helen, who called Lee-Anne to complain, resulting in a row.
"It's really hard to say goodbye when you've got things you really want to say - because we lost those couple of years - when the woman who had caused the rift between us is standing there," says Lee-Anne.
Since the rift she had only seen her brother once, when he and Helen had been visiting their mum and dad in Australia, a couple of months before he died.
Lee-Anne had never been keen on her sister-in-law.
"Initially I met her in 2004 and she just seemed your average housewife-type person," she says. "But the next time I met her I sort of realised that she wasn't totally stable."
On one visit to New Zealand, Lee-Anne visited her brother's house and found Phil "freaking out", she says.
"Helen had actually tried to overdose herself with insulin, to kill herself, or so she had told Phil," Lee-Anne says. "I went in to talk to her and she's going, 'I may as well die,' and I could tell it wasn't the first time she'd pulled it."
Then when Lance was staying with Phil and Helen in 2006, Lee-Anne sensed that Helen was behind another bizarre conversation between Phil and Lance in a pub.
It was all about Karen, Phil's first wife, and the mother of his youngest son, Ben.
"Phil actually asked Lance if he could find a hitman to take out Karen, Something like a house fire so it looked like an accident," says Lee-Anne.
"Lance raced home, rang me in Australia very distraught, and I said: 'Ignore it, don't have another conversation with them about it.'"
Lee-Anne thinks Helen still saw Karen as a possible rival and wanted her out of the way. But at the time it all seemed so far-fetched she didn't alert the police.
After Phil's death, Lee-Anne began to have more contact with Helen, and was startled when she told her Phil had died in his bed - not in his lorry, as she had originally been led to believe.
Then, after the funeral, when Lee-Anne was already back in Australia, Helen called to say she had found a suicide note.
"The suicide note that she read me said that he'd found out his son, Ben, wasn't his son, and he couldn't face him again," Lee-Anne says.
Helen also told her that the funeral director had taken a DNA sample from Phil, and that the results showed there was practically no chance that Ben could be Phil's son.
If this had been true, Ben would not have been entitled to any money from Phil's life insurance policy, Lee-Anne says.
Soon after this phone call, Lee-Anne flew back out to New Zealand, because her son, Lance, was holding his 21st birthday celebration there. Lee-Anne stayed with Helen at her house, and on the first night of the stay, Helen showed Lee-Anne the suicide note.
"I open the note and it's typed," says Lee-Anne. "So that's my next shock, and I don't overly read it, but I look to the bottom and there's Phil's signature and it wasn't Phil's handwriting. So I just started sculling my drink and going to myself, 'Oh my God, she's killed him.' That's where all the puzzle pieces just fell into place."
In the same instant Lee-Anne also realised she might be in danger.
"I was just screaming on the inside and sort of paralysed as well, thinking: 'I can't let her see that I know.' I'm just sitting there going, 'What do I do, what do I do?'"
She poured another stiff drink, went to her bedroom and put the suitcase up against the door. The house was out of town. It would have taken her an hour to walk to anywhere safe and she knew that if she left now, Helen would know she had discovered the truth.
She tried to text her boyfriend in Australia, but found she had insufficient credit on her phone.
She was trapped, and alone.
"I was sure she wasn't going to do something to me because you can't have two dead people show up in your house," says Lee-Anne. "My children knew where I was, that was a bonus, but it was pretty scary."
The next day Lance's birthday celebrations were taking place, and Lee-Anne had to make a difficult decision.
"I felt like I was betraying my son, taking her there," she says. "He had always been so close to Phil, growing up, and I took his uncle's murderer to his 21st - but I couldn't not."
"I'd decided that I was going to play her along at this and see what evidence I could collect to take to the police that week.
Lee-Anne took the news about the suicide note to the officer who had originally dealt with Phil's case. He shared her suspicions. People do not type suicide notes, he told her, and passed the information on to some other officers.
Lee-Anne then returned to Australia and told the rest of her family what she had found out.
Her next step was to speak to the funeral director who had supposedly taken a DNA sample from Phil's body. He vehemently denied the story.
"There was some nice swear words there and he was prepared to take her to court," says Lee-Anne.
She then arranged for a real DNA test to compare samples from her parents and from Ben, proving that Ben was indeed their grandson.
Lee-Anne then spoke to Helen's work colleagues - and what they told her was staggering.
"They'd called her the 'black widow' behind her back," she says. "She'd asked them about rat poison. She said to one who'd done some work at the house, 'Don't worry about Phil, he won't be around for long.'"
While carrying out this detective work, Lee-Anne tried to prevent Helen suspecting that she knew the truth. She had to remain friendly, asking about her health and replying to her messages. But one day it all became too much.
"The stories just got so big, and I lost it with her. And I told her that I knew she'd killed Phil and that was the end of getting any more information out of her," Lee-Anne says.
All the evidence Lee-Anne found she passed to the police. But, to her amazement, they took no action and Helen remained free.
The year after Phil's death, though, Lee-Anne discovered she could request an inquest at the coroner's office.
"We had a meeting with the coroner beforehand and I took evidence to show that it wasn't Phil's signature on the suicide note," says Lee-Anne. "And when she opened up her paperwork to show me the suicide note she had, it had been retyped and there was no handwritten signature - and I broke down. So at the actual inquest I questioned Helen on that and other matters."
That was in November 2010. Then came the long wait for justice.
Six months later the coroner's findings were published.
"I consider that on the facts as established by the evidence before me, I am unable to reach the threshold required for a finding of suicide," she wrote.
At this point the police re-opened the case, and Lee-Anne once again presented them with her evidence.
"My only concern was, was it going to be too late to find evidence to the standard of taking it to court and proving it," she says.
But Helen was arrested and charged not only with murder, but two cases of attempted murder, stemming from two earlier unsuccessful attempts to kill her husband.
The trial finally took place in December, 2013, with Helen in the dock and Lee-Anne facing her in the witness stand.
"I'd been told that, being a witness, the defence would use the stance that I had a vendetta against her, and I'd pretty much set her up for it," says Lee-Anne.
These predictions turned out to be correct. The cross-examination she faced was intense - and there was relentless attention from the media.
On the final day, when the jury was deliberating its decision, Lee-Anne and her family rushed to the courtroom, bringing Phil's ashes with them in a casket, to hear the verdict.
On the first count of attempted murder - Not Guilty.
On the second count of attempted murder - Guilty.
On the charge of murder - Guilty.
"I just cried because it was just such a relief that after such a long fight we'd got what we needed - the truth," says Lee-Anne.
To mark the moment, Lee-Anne's son Lance played one of Phil's favourite songs on his phone - Two out of Three Ain't Bad, by Meatloaf.
Helen received a life sentence, but can apply for parole after 17 years.
The police praised Lee-Anne for her detective work and offered her an apology for the failures of the first investigation.
Lee-Anne is now studying criminology in the hope of helping others negotiate problems with the criminal justice system in future.
She still misses Phil terribly.
"Whenever there was a family birthday, or other gathering, Phil would make the pavlova," she says. "So whenever I make a pav I think of Phil and I think, 'This was his thing - I shouldn't be doing it. He should be here, showing up with the pav.'"
And why did Helen Milner kill her husband? Lee-Anne thinks it was financial greed that motivated her - and in particular the prospect of a $250,000 life-insurance payout.
"As my daughter said one day, 'Why didn't she just do the right thing and divorce him?'" Lee-Anne says.
"But it was never about that. Her whole life had been about money."
Listen to Lee-Anne Cartier speaking to Outlook on the BBC World Service
Lee-Anne has written a book about her experience called The Black Widow.
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Teachers in England and Wales have been preparing to welcome back children for the autumn term, putting in place coronavirus-safe measures. But with 17% of school journeys in England made by bus last year and public transport capacity limited by social distancing, is transport a weak link in plans for a safe return to the classrooms? | By Becky MortonBBC News
Children are at extremely low risk of becoming ill from Covid-19 but evidence on how likely they are to spread the virus is less certain. Prof Jonathan Ball, a virologist at the University of Nottingham, says the main worry is that pupils could potentially transmit the virus back into the community or to teachers.
And public transport carries risks because it can be difficult to socially distance, there are lots of touch points like handrails, and it's a relatively enclosed space, making it easier for the virus to spread.
Government guidance for England states that social distancing will not be required on dedicated school buses, which often carry the same group of children daily, although it should be in place wherever possible.
Schools have also been told to minimise mixing of pupils on transport, by creating "bubbles" or groups of children who stay together throughout the course of the day. However, the guidance notes this may not always be possible, due to limited vehicle space and complex travel arrangements.
Prof Ball agrees that maintaining "bubbles" will be difficult on school buses, as different classes and year groups often travel together, and therefore the risks of wider transmission are greater.
The social aspect of travelling to school also poses problems, he says.
"You're out of the confines and the constraints of the classroom. People will want to talk to others and it's going to be very difficult to control that."
Safety measures recommended by the government to lessen these risks include more frequent cleaning of buses, maximising ventilation through opening windows and ceiling vents and wearing face coverings, as well as staggering school start times. Face coverings are now compulsory on public transport for children 11 and over. This does not apply to dedicated school transport - except in Scotland where the rules change on Monday - although they are recommended in the rest of the UK.
But some families still have concerns.
Rosalind Searle, who lives near Glasgow, where schools have reopened already, says her 15-year-old daughter is anxious about catching the school bus that she would normally take. So is being driven instead.
While Ms Searle says teachers have done a great job implementing social distancing and "bubbles" in the classroom, the journey to school has been a different story.
"They literally can't do it because the bus is rammed," she tells the BBC, adding that it isn't realistic to maintain "bubbles" on the school commute. "In school they've made changes to timetables and staggered lunch breaks but I think [my daughter] just feels there's a bit of a disconnect between that and the transport situation," she adds.
Trips to and from school in England by main mode of transport
43%Walk
37%Car/van
13%Local bus
4%Private bus
2%Bicycle
2%Other
The difficulty of keeping pupils in bubbles while on a bus was highlighted by the Education Policy Institute in July. It warned there was currently "no credible solution" to the problem of pupils mixing with other year groups and schools on the bus home.
Then, earlier this month, the government gave £40m to local transport authorities in England to create extra capacity on school transport for the autumn term. Similarly, ministers in Wales as well as Scotland and Northern Ireland, where pupils have already begun returning to school, have also pledged extra funding to manage the increased demand.
It's down to local transport authorities to decide how they spend the money. In London, where, pre-pandemic, 250,000 school children used public buses daily to get to and from school, dedicated extra services will be put on. More than 220 high-frequency routes that serve schools will have designated "school services", which, unlike normal buses, can fill to capacity. Other authorities, such as Transport for Greater Manchester and Transport for West Midlands, are still in the process of allocating funding.
Pupils are also being encouraged to walk, cycle or use a scooter to get to school where possible.
At least 50% of school journeys of two miles or less are taken by public bus, according to the government, which wants more people to switch to walking or cycling to free up space. In cities including London and Manchester, "school streets" schemes have been introduced, which limit car access outside schools at drop-off and pick-up times to make walking and cycling safer.
For those who live too far to walk, Rosalind Searle says the decision in Scotland to make face coverings compulsory, provides some reassurance.
"I think it will definitely make my daughter more confident about going on the bus," she says. "She hasn't been in school for about five months so she just needs a bit of help with that transition."
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The third victim of a two-vehicle crash that claimed the lives of a mother and daughter has been named by police. | Dr Mohammad Ali Hayajneh, 62, was from Duisburg in Germany.
He was a passenger in a Jeep Cherokee involved in a collision with an Audi A4 close to Ralia, near Kingussie, on 9 July.
Abigail Houston, 42, and seven-year-old Mia, from the Trinity area of Edinburgh, were travelling in the Audi and also died in the accident.
Tributes to them were paid by their family last week.
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For decades, India has recruited Tibetan refugees to a covert unit dedicated to high-altitude combat. But the recent death of a soldier in the force has put the spotlight on this unit, reports the BBC's Aamir Peerzada. | A photograph of Nyima Tenzin was kept in the corner of his house, surrounded by warm light spilling from oil lamps. The hum of prayers continued in the next room, where family members, relatives and Buddhist monks were chanting.
Days earlier, the 51-year-old soldier had died in a landmine blast near Pangong Tso Lake in the Himalayan region of Ladakh, where Indian and Chinese troops have been facing off in recent months. Sources in the Indian army told the BBC that he was killed by an old mine left from the 1962 war the two countries fought.
"On 30 August, around 10:30 in the night, I got a call, saying he was injured," Tenzin's brother, Namdakh, recalled. "They did not tell me that he had died. A friend confirmed the news to me later."
Tenzin, his family told the BBC, had been a member of the Special Frontier Force (SFF), a covert military unit largely comprising Tibetan refugees. It reportedly has about 3,500 soldiers.
Tenzin was a refugee too and he had served in the force for more than 30 years, his family said.
Little is known about the SFF, whose existence has never been officially acknowledged by Indian officials. But it's also a well-known secret, familiar to military and foreign policy experts as well as journalists who cover the region.
Yet, Tenzin's death - in the last weekend of August amid rising tensions between India and China - prompted the first public acknowledgement of Tibetans' role in the Indian military.
The people of Leh, the capital of Ladakh where Tenzin lived, and the Tibetan community came together to bid him farewell in a grand funeral, complete with military honours, including a 21-gun salute.
Senior BJP leader Ram Madhav attended the funeral and placed a wreath on Tenzin's coffin, which was draped in the flags of India and Tibet and was carried to his home in an army truck.
Mr Madhav even tweeted, describing Tenzin as a member of the SFF and "a Tibetan who laid down his life protecting" India's borders in Ladakh. He later deleted the tweet in which he also referred to an Indo-Tibet border rather than an Indo-China border.
Although the government and the army made no official statement, the funeral was widely reported in national media, which interpreted it as a "sharp signal" and a "strong message" to Beijing.
"Till now this [the SFF] was a secret, but it has been acknowledged now and I am very happy," said Namdakh Tenzin. "Anyone who serves should be named and supported.
"We fought in 1971, which was kept a secret, then in 1999 we fought Pakistan in Kargil, that was also kept a secret. But now for the first time it has been acknowledged. This makes me so happy."
The SFF, experts say, was created after the 1962 war between India and China.
"The aim was to recruit Tibetans who had fled to India, and had high altitude guerrilla warfare experience, or were part of Chushi Gandruk, a guerrilla Tibetan force, which fought China till the early 1960s," said Kalsang Rinchen, a Tibetan journalist and filmmaker, whose documentary Phantoms of Chittagong is based on extensive interviews with former SFF troops.
In 1959, after a failed anti-Chinese uprising, the 14th Dalai Lama fled Tibet and set up a government in exile in India, where he continues to live. Tens of thousands of Tibetans followed him into exile and sought asylum in India.
India's support f the Dalai Lama, and the refugees who came with him, quickly became a source of friction between the two countries. India's humiliating defeat in 1962 added to the tension.
BN Mullik, the then chief of Indian intelligence, is reported to have set up the SFF with the help of the CIA. The extent of Washington's role is disputed - while some sources say it was a purely Indian initiative with "full endorsement" from the US, others say that some 12,000 Tibetans were trained by US special forces and partly funded by the US.
"Most of the training was given by Americans," Jampa, a Tibetan refugee, who joined the SFF in 1962, told the BBC.
"There was one guy from the CIA who spoke in broken Hindi - he trained four of our men who understood Hindi as most of us didn't know Hindi. Then those four men trained others."
The force only recruited Tibetans initially but later expanded to include non-Tibetans. Throughout, experts say, the force has reported directly to the federal cabinet and is always headed by a high-ranking official from the army.
"The primary motive was to fight China covertly and gather intelligence," Mr Rinchen said.
The Chinese deny any knowledge of the SFF.
"I'm not aware of Tibetans in exile in the Indian armed forces. You may ask the Indian side for this," Chinese spokesperson Hua Chunying said in a recent press conference.
"China's position is very clear. We firmly oppose any country providing convenience in any form for Tibet independence forces' separatist activities," she added.
Beijing still governs Tibet as an autonomous region of China. And its relations with India have worsened since June when border clashes between the two sides left 20 Indian soldiers dead. India said Chinese soldiers also died in the clash but Beijing has not commented on this.
The cause of the decades-long tension is the poorly demarcated border between the two countries - it cuts through miles of inhospitable terrain.
"It's an odd situation for India," says professor Dibyesh Anand, head of the School of Social Science at the University of Westminster. "India has essentially indicated to China that it will use Tibetans against them, but officially they will not say that."
"We did everything the Indian army does, but we never got the usual military honours or acknowledgement - it still makes me sad," Mr Jampa, the former SFF fighter, said.
It's hard to say what impact India's recent subtle acknowledgement of the SFF will have on its relations with China. But the tensions between the neighbours certainly worry more than 90,000 Tibetans in India, many of whom still hope to return to Tibet some day.
But India feels like home too.
"We all feel proud that Tenzin gave his life for two of our countries - India and Tibet," said his brother-in-law, Tudup Tashi.
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Is six seconds enough to say anything interesting? | Rory Cellan-JonesTechnology correspondent@BBCRoryCJon Twitter
Yes, according to Colin Kroll, the co-founder of the video app Vine, which lets users share clips lasting no longer than that. So, in a phone call to New York, I challenge him to define his company's mission in just six seconds.
His response is this: "The future of Vine is everyone being able to create short looping videos from their mobile phone in the language that they speak and discover great content."
Well, I make that 27 words, and with the average person speaking at three words to the second that's nine seconds, but maybe Colin is faster than average.
Things have certainly moved at warp speed for him and his co-founders. They started their company in June 2012. Three months later it was acquired by Twitter and a year ago today the Vine app was launched amidst much hoopla.
Since then, others have moved into the short social video market - most notably the Facebook empire. Its hugely popular photo-sharing app Instagram now also allows you to post videos. What's more, users can luxuriate in clips lasting a full 15 seconds and can upload something they've shot earlier rather than having to capture them through the app.
And when I used Vine to ask Twitter what I should ask Mr Kroll (yes, I know, a bit too "meta") users wanted to know whether that time limit and the restrictions on how you shoot and edit video would change.
He tells me he and his colleagues are convinced that brevity worked: "People create very elaborate stories in six seconds. It enables a level of creativity that was untapped before Vine."
And while they are thinking about providing different editing mechanisms, the emphasis will remain on keeping it simple.
The other question people want answering is how the app might make money - and here Colin Kroll seems in no more of a hurry than Vine's parent, Twitter, which for years considered it vulgar to to talk about revenues or a business model. "Vine is focused on serving the users," he says, "making it easier to capture moments of your live and share them and discover new content - our focus is not on monetisation."
After a while our conversation begins to feel like a Vine video, the same phrases about "the easiest way to create and share great videos...making it easier to capture and share moments of your life" looping endlessly on.
But then we turn to his favourite Vines, and it seems he is talking from the heart rather than a corporate script. He mentions his own contributions: "I do a series of Vines where I meet famous Viners, and they meet their death - with the hashtag #wemeetatlast. It's a creative outlet that I really enjoy doing!" And he picks out a Vine by Harry Styles from One Direction as one of his favourites. No surprise there, as the teenage heartthrob has been a great boost to the platform, his Vines topping the chart of most viewed.
As to whether Vine or any form of short social video is ever going to be the future of communication, the jury is still out on whether everyone wants to share short clips. It may be that this is just a short-lived craze amongst users in their teens and 20s, who are already moving on to Snapchat. But Colin Kroll tells me that people's adoption of video is "still in its infancy" and points out that turning everyone into social photographers had taken more than a decade, so we shouldn't be too impatient.
We have very little data on how the contest between Vine and Instagram for this market is going. All we know is that there are 40 million Vine users, and about four times as many on Instagram, although how many use its video capabilities isn't clear. But both have the luxury of corporate parents with very deep pockets and ambitions to develop video advertising. So don't expect either Vine or Instagram to give up on their battle to give you the world in six or 15 seconds.
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An investment package has been announced to fund repairs to a partially-collapsed wall on the West Quay at Stranraer harbour.
| It follows emergency work carried out earlier this year when part of the quayside had to be cordoned off.
Tonnes of rock were used to limit further movement in the area.
Now £350,000 will be drawn from a coastal infrastructure programme and underspends on other projects to carry out further works.
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Nearly 50 years after Raman Raghav terrorised Mumbai (then Bombay) by murdering 41 people, there's renewed interest in the serial killer - a film made for television in 1991 had its first public screening a fortnight ago and Raghav is also the subject of a feature film being made by indie director Anurag Kashyap.
The BBC's Geeta Pandey travels to Mumbai to piece together the story of the man described as India's "Jack the Ripper". | Raman Raghav went on a killing spree over three years in the 1960s, casting a spell of fear over the city.
His victims were all poor people who either slept on the pavements or lived in ramshackle huts and temporary shanties in the northern suburbs of the city. They included men, women and children - even infants.
They were attacked at night while they slept, and all of them died after their heads were smashed with "a hard and blunt instrument", writes Ramakant Kulkarni, the young police officer who took over as the head of the crime branch in 1968 and whose team eventually captured Raghav on 27 August 1968.
Mr Kulkarni, who retired in 1990 as the head of Maharashtra police and died in 2005, wrote detailed accounts of the case in two books: "Footprints on the Sands of Crimes" and "Crimes, Criminals and Cops".
"The murders were motiveless... if any petty gain had been achieved in the process, the violence inflicted on the victims was totally disproportionate to any such gain," he wrote.
As new murders were reported almost daily, rumours began circulating about "a mysterious assailant... gifted with supernatural powers" who could "assume the shape of a parrot or a cat" and the press dubbed him "India's Jack the Ripper", according to Lily Kulkarni, Mr Kulkarni's wife.
More than 2,000 policemen patrolled the streets at the time, but the city was in the grip of panic, especially in the suburban areas, Mrs Kulkarni says.
Parks and streets emptied out at dusk and in many areas, nervous residents carrying sticks patrolled the streets.
There were several incidents in which beggars and homeless men were badly assaulted by panicky crowds.
The murders took place in two lots - the first between 1965 and 1966 when 19 people were attacked. Raghav, who was found loitering in the area, was picked up then as well, but let off because police couldn't find any evidence against him.
The second round of killings took place in 1968, and on 27 August, a sub-inspector from Mr Kulkarni's team recognised him from photographs and descriptions given by those who had survived his attacks.
"As the news of the arrest spread, a large crowd gathered outside my husband's office. People celebrated," Mrs Kulkarni remembers.
There is little known about Raghav's childhood or early life. Reports from the time describe him as a Tamilian, who was tall and well-built, had little school education and was homeless.
During interrogation, he proved to be "a tough nut" who refused to say anything for two days, but the police had a breakthrough on day three.
Mr Kulkarni's book describes how one of Raghav's interrogators casually asked him if there was something which he really wanted and "without a moment's thought", he said "murgi" - chicken.
After he was fed a dish of chicken, he was asked if he wanted something else.
He asked for more chicken.
Next, he said he would "like to have a prostitute, but I guess the law does not permit that while one is in custody" - so he settled for hair oil, a comb and a mirror instead.
"He massaged his whole body with the coconut oil, appreciating its fragrance, combed his hair and looked admiringly at his own face in the mirror."
Then, he asked the police what they wanted from him.
"We want to know about the murders," one officer said.
"Well I shall tell you all about them," he said, and led the policemen to the bushes in Aarey Colony where he had hidden his tools - an iron crowbar, knives and other weapons.
During his confession before the magistrate, Raghav admitted to killing 41 people, though police say they believe the numbers to be higher.
In his confession, he said he had done it voluntarily and that he had been instructed by "God" to do so.
Other Indian serial killers
'Auto' Shankar: Convicted of killing six people in the late 1980s in the southern state of Tamil Nadu. His real name was Gowri Shankar, but he was called Auto Shankar because he drove an autorickshaw. He and his group were found guilty of transporting illicit liquor, abducting women and running a prostitution racket, besides brutal murders. He was hanged in 1995.
'Cyanide' Mohan: Convicted in the southern state of Karnataka of killing 20 women. Born in 1963, Mohan Kumar preyed on women looking to get married - he would give them cyanide pills claiming they were contraceptives and rob them of their jewellery. He was arrested in 2009 and given the death sentence in December 2013.
Surinder Koli: Worked as the servant for businessman Moninder Singh Pandher in Nithari village in the Delhi suburb of Noida. The servant and the master were accused of killing, raping and dismembering at least 19 young women and children. Koli was accused even of cannibalism. The deaths were discovered in December 2006 after body parts and children's clothing were found blocking the sewer running in front of the house. While Mr Pandher was later freed on bail for lack of evidence, Koli has been found guilty of five murders. He is on death row.
The Stoneman: Nine people were killed in Mumbai in 1989 and each victim was found with their head bludgeoned by a stone or a heavy blunt object. The case remains one of the most famous unsolved murders in India as the killer was never caught.
The Beerman: Six people were killed in Mumbai between October 2006 and January 2007 and in each case, a bottle of beer was found beside the body. Police arrested Ravindra Kantrole and accused him of being the Beerman, but he was freed due to lack of evidence.
During his trial, Raghav's lawyers pleaded insanity - they said he did not know that killing people "was wrong or contrary to law".
But the "police surgeon" certified him as "neither suffering from psychosis nor mentally retarded", and the court gave him the death penalty.
In his order, Judge CT Dighe described him as a "psychopath, extremely wicked man with depraved or brutal mentality" and said his crimes were "unparalleled and unsurpassed in brutality".
Media reports at the time said a large crowd outside the court greeted Raghav with "shouts, whistles and jeers" - and he "replied with equal energy".
Despite the ruthlessness of his crimes, and the fact that Raghav did not appeal, he escaped the gallows.
The high court, which had to confirm his death sentence, ordered a re-evaluation of his sanity and put his sentence on hold after a panel of three psychiatrists said he was schizophrenic and suffered from delusions and hence was "incurably mentally ill".
"We got lots of calls from the public, mostly women, asking my husband why he was not being hanged," Mrs Kulkarni said.
Raghav was lodged in Yerwada jail in the city of Pune.
In 1987, after he had spent 18 years in solitary confinement, the high court commuted his death sentence to life in jail, and he died from a kidney ailment the same year.
Today, nearly 50 years later, not many in Mumbai know about Raman Raghav.
Perhaps the two films will help revive the interest in the psychopath who once terrorised the city.
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Loans of £26.2m owed by Aberdeen Exhibition and Conference Centre (AECC) are set to be written off by the city council. | The local authority's new Labour-led administration said it was its intention to "pay off" the debts owed to the council.
Council leader Barney Crockett said it would give the AECC a "firmer financial footing".
He said it would be "a major public exhibition space unencumbered by debt".
The AECC has been bailed out by Aberdeen City Council several times in recent years.
The centre brings in tens of millions of pounds annually for the local economy, and is seen as vital to Aberdeen's status as an energy capital and host of the Offshore Europe events.
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China's president Xi Jinping will be in Manchester as he comes to the end of his UK visit. A mixture of excitement and protest is expected for what is believed to be the first time the city has hosted a state visit. | By Arif AnsariPolitical editor, BBC North West Tonight
It comes as the government is trying to persuade the Chinese to invest in the region's economy.
About 230 people will sit down for lunch in Manchester Town Hall to watch civic history in the making.
Local dignitaries and business people will break bread with President Xi and David Cameron, and witness the state visit.
He will also visit Manchester City's stadium and Manchester University.
It is not a coincidence the city is being placed on the diplomatic map.
The Chancellor and MP for nearby Tatton, George Osborne, has been ambitious in marketing the "Northern Powerhouse" - his strategy to strengthen the economy in the north of England.
'Sales pitch'
Last month Mr Osborne visited China to build economic and political links, and he took local government leaders from northern England with him - a sales pitch for the "Northern Powerhouse".
On the final day in Chengdu, Mr Osborne even published a catalogue offering the Chinese a range of investment opportunities.
Part of the Chancellor's problem is that he is ambitious. Creating a "Northern Powerhouse" would reverse a historic economic decline.
An important part of the strategy rests on creating new transport infrastructure. None of this is cheap.
But at the same time, George Osborne has pledged to eliminate the budget deficit.
That's why he's turning to others for the finance. And China has plenty of spare cash.
Capital investments
But while the Chinese have shown a willingness to invest in property schemes such as Manchester Airport City or Middlewood Locks in Salford, there does not appear to be as much enthusiasm to put cash into infrastructure.
Will that change?
It would be odd if President Xi did not come bearing gifts. But the main announcement expected is new direct flights between Manchester and Beijing.
That will be a welcome boost, calculated to be worth about £50m per year to the regional economy. But it does not feel like a breakthrough announcement.
The reality is that George Osborne has spent a lot of political capital building links with China. And he will need a fair bit of Chinese financial capital in return to convince critics that it was worth it.
China and the UK
What does China own in the UK?
Banquets and tiaras: China reacts to Xi UK visit
China and 'the Osborne Doctrine'
How China guards the Xi creation myth
Can UK be China's best partner in the West?
Who is President Xi Jinping?
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